The colors only shrimp see a collection of short stories & analysis

The Colors Only Shrimp See is a compilation of short stories related to travel- one fiction, three nonfiction, and one perspective-a true story told from the eyes of my grandfather. The greater project of this piece is the writing analysis preceding the works themselves. The thesis is not just the short story collection on its own, but a thorough iteration of the writing process in each draft of each short story. Every draft is included in the portfolio as a method of observing the change over time, for better or for worse. I originally wrote this portfolio for a Travel Writing workshop at the University of Utah. The professor, Dr. Michael Gills, asked us to write one page every weekday throughout the course of the semester-14 weeks-and those pages would comprise the final project. Dr. Gills gave us 5 short story prompts: 1. "A Road Trip," 2. "A Place That No Longer Exists," 3. "7 Directions," 4. "Spring Break," and 5. "Design Your Own Prompt." The "Road Trip" prompt was as simple as it sounds; we were to write about a road trip. I wrote a fiction piece before learning that the class was nonfiction only, but Dr. Gills was forgiving. "A Place That No Longer Exists" again is self-explanatory but goes deeper than the surface; any place is a place that no longer exists because places change once we leave. For any character, there are "7 Directions"-front, back, left, right, up, down, and the inside. We were to write a story detailing that space around ourselves. For "Spring Break," we had to simply travel over the break, and write about our travels. For the "Design Your Own Prompt," we were given the liberty to write any nonfiction travel piece as we willed. On top of these prompts, Gills also assigned us side-projects, such as a writing process evaluation included in a midterm evaluation, a sentence that spans the length of one page, a revision of one of our short stories, and a detailed research process for our nonfiction pieces, embellishing them with true facts. With the class ended, I revised my short stories further, creating multiple drafts for them, continuing my writing process into the summer and towards graduation. The thesis includes how the process differed in the class compared to after the class, and the essays in their first and second drafts.

ABSTRACT The Colors Only Shrimp See is a compilation of short stories related to travel— one fiction, three nonfiction, and one perspective—a true story told from the eyes of my grandfather. The greater project of this piece is the writing analysis preceding the works themselves. The thesis is not just the short story collection on its own, but a thorough iteration of the writing process in each draft of each short story. Every draft is included in the portfolio as a method of observing the change over time, for better or for worse. I originally wrote this portfolio for a Travel Writing workshop at the University of Utah. The professor, Dr. Michael Gills, asked us to write one page every weekday throughout the course of the semester—14 weeks—and those pages would comprise the final project. Dr. Gills gave us 5 short story prompts: 1. “A Road Trip,” 2. “A Place That No Longer Exists,” 3. “7 Directions,” 4. “Spring Break,” and 5. “Design Your Own Prompt.” The “Road Trip” prompt was as simple as it sounds; we were to write about a road trip. I wrote a fiction piece before learning that the class was nonfiction only, but Dr. Gills was forgiving. “A Place That No Longer Exists” again is self-explanatory but goes deeper than the surface; any place is a place that no longer exists because places change once we leave. For any character, there are “7 Directions”—front, back, left, right, up, down, and the inside. We were to write a story detailing that space around ourselves. For “Spring Break,” we had to simply travel over the break, and write about our travels. For the “Design Your Own Prompt,” we were given the liberty to write any nonfiction travel piece as we willed. On top of these prompts, Gills also assigned us side-projects, such as a writing process evaluation included in a midterm evaluation, a sentence that spans the length of ii one page, a revision of one of our short stories, and a detailed research process for our nonfiction pieces, embellishing them with true facts. With the class ended, I revised my short stories further, creating multiple drafts for them, continuing my writing process into the summer and towards graduation. The thesis includes how the process differed in the class compared to after the class, and the essays in their first and second drafts. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ii PROCESS ANALYSIS 1 ESSAYS ROAD TRIP 14 ROAD TRIP REVISION 25 A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 35 A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 47 7 DIRECTIONS 59 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 69 SPRING BREAK 79 SPRING BREAK REVISION 90 DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 100 DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 113 WORKS CITED 124 iv 1 PROCESS ANALYSIS They say books are never done, just due. I certainly feel that way about this thesis. I’m dissatisfied with a great deal of it, but it is due. Here below is a week-by-week reflection on the writing process during the 14 weeks of class based on the daily Canvas logins we had to do. Thereafter is the reflection on all the writing that took place after the class. Week 1: In our first week of writing, I was very eager to have a specific writing schedule. In hindsight, I haven’t stuck to that very well. That should definitely change. But writing consistently, despite lacking a disciplined routine, was still very helpful. Over the course of that week, I was reading The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy in a more spread-out manner as well, rather than taking her stories all in one sitting. That definitely aided the writing process. It gave me something to “steal” each day, in the words of Michael Gills. I should definitely try to read more before I write. That will get the juices flowing a little smoother. From the get-go, I was pretty critical of my writing. I was unsatisfied with the first direction my “Road Trip” essay was going in. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the reason I was unsatisfied was that I was unsure of the conflict. That’s when I concocted my fiction piece, unaware that we weren’t supposed to write fiction. Still, I was glad I had at least come up with a conflict, and ultimately, I was pretty proud of some of the stuff I had come up with in that piece. But I think I might be getting ahead of myself. It seems on the next day I took note of my discouragement at the time. Being a good writer is something I’ve always strived for, so having to confront my writing every day was something of a transition, especially my prose. My poetry, in my mind, was decent, but I wasn’t a huge fan of my prose. PROCESS ANALYSIS 2 Week 2: During week 2, I started retroactively adding to my writing. I wasn’t sure if that was allowed; we were told to look forward, but I had just taken that to mean don’t delete anything. If I thought of new ways to embellish past scenes, that seemed acceptable to me. I began to have ideas for my writing during periods of the day when I wasn’t sitting down to write. I worried about the acceptability of that protocol; saving ideas to add to my writing later. I think I was too high-strung. Most often these ideas would come after my classes—when I was in the zone, thinking about literature, ready to steal. Another testament to how important reading is for my own writing. It also took down my BS detector a little bit; I felt less pressure to write a masterpiece when I was just walking out of class or driving down the road. Week 3: This week was very cathartic for me. Thanks to the prompt, “A Place That No Longer Exists,” I was able to revisit a time in my life that I had wanted to for a long time—high school. I get flashes of it every now and then, and this sense that I won’t live past it. I was able to put a lot of my fears into that piece, and that provided a lot of closure honestly. I also became interested in getting to know my workshop members a little more, and while that didn’t necessarily influence my writing process, it did make our class meetings feel better, and that’s a big component of this whole workshop. Looks like this week I forgot to do a daily log-in. It wouldn’t be the last time certainly. Week 3 is always when the class loads start to become heavier, and that certainly impacts someone’s writing. Speaking of class loads, I anticipated Travel Writing to be my most strenuous class of the semester, but, despite the daily writing, it hardly felt like work at all. I always loved writing, so that aided my enjoyment of our homework, and getting feedback on my writing has always been something of a sweet release for me, both the PROCESS ANALYSIS 3 validation and the criticism. One thing is evident in this week of writing—I was able to find the conflict much easier, and that made me feel much better about the “Place That No Longer Exists” prompt compared to the “Road Trip” prompt. Week 4: This was a tough week for all of us, and I was no stranger to that toughness. My grandpa passed away just two days before this writing week started. I was so grateful and impressed with the sympathy of my classmates. We were close, my grandpa and me. I saw him nearly every week of my life. Obviously, that kind of loss impacts all aspects of life, including writing. In a way, I still can’t believe he’s gone. Not gone forever. But gone for now. I should’ve reached out to my classmates when they offered. I really did want to talk about it, but I just wasn’t sure what to say. Writing was a good outlet, not for saying the things I didn’t know how to say—that remained a mystery to me. Somehow, though, I did understand myself and my feelings a little better because of it. Three weeks before class started, I was transferred to teach at Hunter High School. Just before I was transferred, there was a shooting near the school. It was most likely gang-motivated. Two students passed away—Paul and Tivani. Another student, Ephraim, ended up in the hospital. I didn’t know any of them personally, but you could feel very palpably the stew of emotions that the series of events brewed. That week, we held two classes just to talk about grief. In many ways, it felt awkward. In other ways, it felt way too relevant for me having just lost Grandpa Wardell. But I got to talk to some kids one and one, and that felt helpful for everyone. I’m grateful that they were willing to open up, and I got to be open with them too. Before I realized the page limits on our assignments were arbitrary, I was worried I’d have to cut things from my “APTNLE” essay. As I finished writing it, I was able to PROCESS ANALYSIS 4 keep it close enough to 10 pages, albeit a little over, but I was content. I quite liked what I wrote and didn’t want to have to cut anything. Week 5: Okay, I’ve slipped away from the whole point of this—a process analysis. Looks like week 5 was busy for me as well since I missed a daily login or two. This week was the start of the “7 Directions” piece. I already had an idea for the theme I wanted to convey. In class just a few days before, Dr. Gills gave us time to map out this writing week, which gave me the opportunity to actually pick what scene I’d be writing about. I thought of the most vivid moments in my life. When I lived in Spain as a 12year-old with my parents, we had taken part in a celebration called Las Fallas, where the Spaniards create floats representing sin and burn them to the ground. It would make a fun piece, but I didn’t remember it well enough. I thought about my time in Colombia as a missionary; there was the mountain attraction of Monserrate, the restaurant that floated on the Amazon River, the desert of the Tatacoa, a very dangerous neighborhood called The Amparo (which is quite an ironic name if you speak Spanish), and the widespread homes of the Amazonians along Los Kilometros. Despite all being great contenders, I settled on the time I got robbed. The approach I wanted to take with this piece was to go one direction at a time, describing each one as if I were looking all 7 directions at once, and that singular moment—being robbed at knifepoint—felt vivid and exciting enough to spread across those 7 directions. For pages 1-3, I planned the hook and the introduction— basically everything in front of me at the time of the robbery. For pages 4-5, I planned the exposition—the events leading up to that moment, everything that was behind me. And that would be the writing week! 5 pages. How did that plan work out? Surprisingly well. The hook and introduction took almost exactly three pages. The exposition took a little PROCESS ANALYSIS 5 less than two, but that’s okay. That allowed me to get a small head-start on the next part of the work, where I’d really explore the conflict—the idea of reality and what it’s like to live another person’s life. Having that plan was really helpful. I wish I had the gusto to plan out all my weekly writings like that. This week, I again sought to get to know my classmates better. I asked everyone what their favorite movie is. I got some great replies—some words of affirmation, and some new suggestions. Again, I must emphasize how much that makes me feel like I’m in a real workshop. And we are a real workshop. My grandfather’s funeral was this week. I had to miss class for it. That was a shame in one sense; Travel Writing had become my favorite class. But under the circumstances, it seemed fair. Week 6: The funeral lingered in my mind days after the fact. I think that was to be expected. The funeral itself was very light. I think my grandpa would’ve enjoyed it profusely, though he might’ve thought it was too long and would’ve hated all the attention we were giving him. Imagery is a literary device I’ve never considered myself very good at. When writing poetry, I rely so much on metaphors that I rarely describe something literally and in-depth, which is a pretty bad habit on my part. Lots of poems use imagery, I should incorporate it more. The class on the whole has aided me in my ability to use imagery, but especially this “7 Directions” piece, in my case, taking only one scene and stretching it out. I still have a way to go. As I pointed out in one of my daily logins, I often forget the 5 senses when using imagery. That would be an easy way to extend my scenes. PROCESS ANALYSIS 6 This week, I noticed a strong urge to delete and restart my sentences, which we’ve been told not to do. Gills suggested to me I use a typewriter or write by hand. I actually do have a typewriter. It never had a ribbon. I ought to dig it out of my closet and look for ribbons on Amazon. As I wrote, I tended to write a sentence, especially an inner monologue, and then think That sounds stupid. With everything I had to do this week— an essay in another class, lesson plans for school and work, and nearly hundreds of pages of reading—I had to just keep looking forward. If I kept deleting, I wasn’t going to finish. In rereading my own writing, I feel that I ramble too much, ask too many rhetorical questions, etc. Perhaps it’s a way I cope with the fact that I’m not too polished when it comes to imagery. The writing process itself felt a little slow this week, just coming sentence by sentence, with large pauses in between each one. (This is where the first draft of the writing process ends. Weeks 1-6 were analyzed for the midterm evaluation. Weeks 7 onward were analyzed for the final portfolio). Week 7: This week there was no prompt to work on; the next essay to come was the “Spring Break” piece where we traveled somewhere and wrote about it. Since I hadn’t traveled yet, I couldn’t do that. Instead, I took care of a few things for the portfolio, like this writing process analysis. Ultimately, the week was spent doing those administrative touches. If I’m being honest, I was a little bored writing out my process and summaries of my work that had come up to that point. Oddly, though, despite how boring it was, the writing itself actually came pretty easily. I was surprised at how much I had to say about my writing and time in class. Writing stories is definitely harder than writing about writing—it’s more taxing on the mind, and there’s a sense of pressure to PROCESS ANALYSIS 7 create something good. Though it is more difficult, it also feels more rewarding. Story writing has its grueling pauses just trying to think of how to make that next part flow (that would be the BS detector going off), but it’s so nourishing when it finally comes out, even if it’s not very good at first. Week 8: Over the weekend, I took my trip. I went to Las Vegas to go see Billy Joel with a friend. On the way there, we were stopped on the highway. As it was all happening, all I could think to myself was, This is going to make a really neat story. I was very excited to start that essay, but I had to do some finishing touches on my midterm evaluation, particularly the research process. I went through my search history to find all the sources that I used because I neglected to write them down, fool that I am. Going through my search history revealed to me that I had done more research than I realized, and that felt good, though having to compile all the sources was tedious. I was able to get my midterm evaluation done before the end of the week, so with my last two pages of daily writing, I was able to start my travel essay. Week 9: This week was actually spring break (I took my travel a week early), and Dr. Gills gave us permission to take the week off from writing and use the time to just travel and have an experience. Week 10: It was hard to get back into the swing of things once spring break was over. I should have kept writing more, even if not for the class. I wrote some poetry, but that wasn’t totally sustaining the way writing a page of prose each day is. My plan this week was to begin waking up at 4:30 a.m. to write so that my internal BS detector would be off, or at least too tired to do its job. But then I got sick. I needed sleep each night, so I continued to write more in the evenings and sleep in each PROCESS ANALYSIS 8 morning. I never did end up attempting to write early in the morning. But there will be the opportunity to do so when I turn this into my thesis. My sickness really affected my ability to write. When I have a cold, I feel extreme fatigue and even less motivated than usual. The sickness was also causing me some discouragement. I wrote in my notes that “It almost feels like no matter how much I get done, I’m still further behind than I’d like to be.” I took good notes while traveling, so that certainly aided me in the writing process. I really worked to embellish the imagery in the first section of the piece— imagery still being something I consider a weakness on my part. I do feel like my imagery has improved since the beginning of the semester. The week felt like a bit of a drag—writing came very slowly one sentence at a time, I had to write until I truly felt like writing—until the end of the week. Once Friday hit, I was on a roll. Maybe it had something to do with my sickness beginning to subside, or perhaps I just had a better vision of where my story was going. Either way, I got a page ahead, and that pleased me. Week 11: This week I finished the first draft of the “Spring Break” piece. Getting to the 9th page felt a little difficult. Obviously, no one was forcing it to be any length in particular. I was just trying to include everything my peer critique partner, Benjamin, told me to, like more characterization of some of the other figures in the story. That was good advice. Aside from that, the workload from my other classes all week was pretty taxing, and that negatively impacted my writing process overall. I felt very little consistency in my schedule and in the flow of the writing. Week 12: I discovered I was 10 pages behind this week. I don’t know how that happened. I had to double down on the writing—2 pages a day instead of just 1. That PROCESS ANALYSIS 9 wasn’t as hard as I anticipated. I started by rewriting my “Spring Break” piece. In class the Friday before, Gills had us do a scale where we chose an arbitrary structure for any of our pieces, so I planned a second draft of “Spring Break.” Concentrating on writing was difficult this week. I had work to do in other classes, and there were distractions pulling me away on all other sides. It didn’t help that I had to pump out double the writing than I usually would. Reading Finisterre by Dr. Gills helped motivate me to write a little more— reading always helps the writing process. I loved the way Gills intertwined humor into his ruminations. Humor was something that almost unintentionally entered my pieces, based on the feedback of my workshop and peer critics. It seems like when I try to be humorous it’s lame, and when I try to be serious it just comes out humorous. Week 13: We planned a roadmap for our portfolio this week. I did pretty well at sticking with it for nearly the whole week, then I fell behind at the end, then I had to catch up later. This is a pretty common occurrence in the way I work. I also went to the undergraduate research symposium during the week. It was fascinating; if I had been able to stay longer, I bet I would have garnered more inspiration for my writing. Learning always does that for me. The workload kept up this week, pulling me away from my writing. I also got a little bored writing my revision of my travel piece, so I bounced between that and my “Design Your Own Prompt” piece. I did eventually finish the revision, and once I did, I worked on the one-page sentence. It flowed surprisingly easily; I was worried I would be overly reliant on semicolons, but in the end, it was gerunds that seemed to dominate the sentence. PROCESS ANALYSIS 10 Week 14: In the last week of daily writing, I finished my “Design Your Own Prompt” piece. I worried I wouldn’t reach our 70-page minimum, but I ended up with 72, meaning I wrote 7 pages for the week rather than 5. It was so gratifying, both to finish and to get just past 70. I quite enjoyed writing the choice piece, so once I got a couple of paragraphs down, the rest flowed smoothly. I had it all mapped out in my head, and it pleased me to see it all take shape and turn out even longer than I anticipated. I was tired this week, but the writing was highly fulfilling. In looking at my body of work, I had to decide on a final title. We workshopped my “7 Directions” piece the Friday before. The piece was originally titled “More Real,” a slight reference to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. I thought it was a decent title, but my peers weren’t so enthusiastic. But, within the piece, there was another option that Gills suggested. (This is where the process analysis ended for the final portfolio. Here begins the process analysis for the writing after the class). I, unfortunately, did not keep up with writing one page a day, more often than not writing in sporadic bursts every few days at a time. Dr. Gills suggested that in order to turn my writings into a thesis, I should revise the pieces that had not yet had a revision— the pieces with the prompts of “Road Trip,” “A Place That No Longer Exists,” “7 Directions,” and the “Design Your Own Prompt.” For revising, I just went piece by piece, starting with the prompts that I enjoyed writing the least. I took a somewhat bold approach to the rewrites. I didn’t look back at the original pieces except in minuscule doses. I tried to just rely completely on memory. I figured the most memorable parts of PROCESS ANALYSIS 11 the stories would remain in my mind, and as such the least memorable parts of the story would be tossed, revised, or rewritten and improved. “A Place That No Longer Exists”: This piece took on a new framework, and almost a completely new narrative. The original piece was written about my high school experience. That idea was given new context when I was transferred to Brighton High School, my alma mater, to teach in the fall of 2022. The story had always been about whether or not I would progress beyond ‘peaking’ in high school, and I felt that the new context of my going back to be a teacher would present a more interesting dynamic. So, the narrative was built around the joys and struggles of teaching, as well as a relationship with a high school sweetheart. My workshop classmates told me they liked the lack of resolution in the first draft of the story, so I kept that, despite most everything else being different. A good portion of the story is taken up by quotations from actual emails I sent and received, with minor changes for privacy’s sake. In hindsight, I don’t know that it makes for the interesting reading I hoped it would. I think the emails that were sent to me are in large part essential to the emotional punches within the story, but my written responses to them may not have been necessary. If anything, I may have been trying to protect my image by including them in the story. Perhaps I should’ve been more vulnerable—another problem of mine when writing. “Road Trip”: As with the “Place That No Longer Exists” prompt, I feel that my second draft of the “Road Trip” piece came out much better than the first. This was my only piece of fiction in the portfolio. The first draft felt a little too on the nose, with little room for audience interpretation. The new draft feels much more subtle despite sharing its theme with the original story. With the original Road Trip piece, our focus was meant PROCESS ANALYSIS 12 to be imagery. I tried to carry that over into the second draft, and the entire first page ended up being a scenic shot. This piece felt more slow-going than the rewrite that came before, but I felt that snail’s pace was rather essential to the way the story turned out. Part of that sluggishness was the need to do more research than with most other pieces. To challenge myself, I attempted to write about a place I’d never been. This second draft also had the added challenge of a female protagonist who worked in a field I was completely unfamiliar with. The first draft was about a man whose profession was writing. Dr. Gills helped me course correct there as he told me that metafiction is a tired trope at this point. We don’t need more stories about stories. “7 Directions”: For some reason, this piece was the most excruciating of the rewrites. I mentioned previously that imagery is difficult for me, and almost the entire piece is predicated on imagery spanning 7 directions around the focal character. I also mentioned how my pieces feel like they ramble or are overflowing with an inner monologue. That certainly feels true of this piece. I think I like the first draft better than I like the second, but it’s a tough call. The difference between this rewrite and the previous two rewrites of my other essays is the fact that this story remained pretty much the same, even after the revision. I did scrape a lot of inner monologues and tried to streamline the conflict. Even with such revisions, the main gist of the story is the same. I still didn’t think to use the five senses as much as I should have with my descriptions. “Design Your Own Prompt”: It seems I prefer my rewrites when they’re complete overhauls of the original story. As before, I think I may have enjoyed the first draft more than this second. Also keeping in time with the “7 Directions” piece, not much changed between the first draft and the rewrite. I stated that I tried to keep only that which was PROCESS ANALYSIS 13 memorable; with this story, almost every detail felt memorable. Maybe it was the fact that my grandpa is the one who told me the story. Looking back, I feel that my literary devices were used much better in the first draft than in the second. That being said, there are certain aspects I prefer within the second draft. I think I characterized my grandpa’s siblings a little better than before, so that aspect I would keep. Besides that, the other major facets of the story felt better to me initially. Of course, I’m a biased critic, and I’ve always been bad at self-critique. On that note, one major difference with the rewrites is the fact that I no longer had my workshop to help me critique them. I was purely on my own. This proved challenging to say the least. Sometimes, I’m very proud of what I write, other times, it feels terrible. Even looking back on this process analysis, the analysis of my time in class feels cringeworthy. In another sense, I revel in that being the case. If my writing from almost a year ago reads poorly to me, that means I must’ve improved as a writer. That’s the optimistic view at least. But I’ll let the reader judge for themselves. Initially, I thought the research component would be the hardest part of the thesis, but it felt like quite the natural integration. I pointed out in the week-to-week analysis that I would go through my search history and rediscover everything I’d googled for each story. Sometimes I was shocked by just how much research I actually did. Most of it pertained to the scenery and wildlife of certain places. Some of it was a look back into the events of the past. All in all, the research just felt like an extension of my writing, and of myself. It was a natural development of the story-writing process. PROCESS ANALYSIS 14 The short stories follow in the order they were originally written: “Road Trip,” “A Place That No Longer Exists,” “7 Directions,” “Spring Break,” and “Design Your Own Prompt.” ROAD TRIP 15 LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE “Not your best,” he said nonchalantly as he slapped my manuscript down on his desk. I was tired of hearing those words from my editor, to put it delicately. “Jimmy, come on, I feel like you’ve been saying that for the last two years,” I protested, but he cut me off before I could keep going, holding up the book that he had accepted and published two years ago to the day. I still remember the date vividly. It was November 12th, 1978, when my book first hit stores. It had been my only ambition for so long that once I saw it there on the shelves, I knew that it couldn’t end there. “It’s not this, Herald,” Jimmy compared my book to my manuscript. “You know, there’s nothing wrong with catching lightning in a bottle just once. Most people never catch lightning at all.” I couldn’t stand for that. The only thing Jimmy could do for me was give me some advice: “Take a little trip. Fresh air ought to do you good.” Malarkey. But if I told him I had taken a trip, then it just might be the placebo he needed to finally see my newer work as publishable. I started driving. Where to? Hell if I knew. I figured I’d drive out somewhere, grab a hotel room for the night, then drive straight back, and that would surely convince Jimmy that I was still in my prime, hitting my stride, snatching all of the lightning God could throw at me and stuffing it in one of my bourbons on the shelf. Or maybe a wine from the cellar. Novembers in Colorado were a real game of Russian roulette with temperatures ranging anywhere from 20 to 50 degrees. At the rotation of your tire the weather could go from sun to snow to rain to snow to sun again. Just today for example, when I woke up, got ready, and headed out to my car, it was 26 degrees Fahrenheit—frigid. With my ROAD TRIP 16 exhale, as my warm air hit the casing of cold around me, a puff of vapor escaped my lips so thick and dense that you could grab it, tie it to a string, and carry it around like a balloon. No snow as of yet, but my windshield had completely frozen over. If you were to watch the process in high speed, you’d see how it starts freezing from the middle outwards in a spiral of snowflake shapes. I always wondered why nature was so obsessed with the number 6 and hexagons and the like. Those Bible folks say that 6 is the devil’s number while 7 is God’s number. I could certainly see the devil’s hand in freezing the glass on my car to the point that I shaved two years off my life expending my energy to scrape it all off. The metropolis looked like a painting, especially to an outsider the first time they saw it draped in all that snow. But there was no snow today, just frozen windshields, and rather than fallen snowflakes there was fallen litter that steadily filled up the gutters as building attendants and doormen swept the trash off of the sidewalk and into the road. Luckily, my windshield didn’t freeze over again when I came out of Jimmy’s. I left his office around 10 a.m. and just started driving. The highway rode downhill, and just outside the barrier was a high stone fence to keep out any wandering children who might be lurking along the side of the highway from going into the rough thorn bushes and spike trees that laid beyond, unattended for years and years. The fence was comprised of stone rectangles, one stacked next to the other, each wall coming below the last in a staircase pattern along the downward incline. The sun was at just the right height that at each separation between rectangles, the corner was catching the sunlight, so that while traveling 70 miles an hour, the sun clipped in and out of my vision, shining, then disappearing, at least 10 times within a single second. Lighting and darkening like when ROAD TRIP 17 my father would knock the tall lamp over in his stumbling stupors, and the bulb would flash in and out rapidly for half a second. I stopped at a gas station, the second stop for gas on this trip. Outside, none of the pumps were in use. The service was small. Only three pumps. I decided I’d refill even though I wasn’t quite close to empty yet. I saw the big green sign at the entrance to the service station just off of the road. The sign simply read “¢89” in a jagged yellow cloud, like the “Pow!” bubbles from the comics back in the 60s. Back when I was a kid. I always loved the smell of gas; I took in a full whiff as I pushed the pump into the tank, and I could hear my car guzzling down the fuel. Listening to that sound made me realize how thirsty I was, so I wandered over to the gas station door. As I approached the entrance, I realized I had been here before. I had to pause, then look around. I don’t know how it took me so long to realize it, but this was the gas station just two miles from the place where I grew up, double-taking to make sure I wasn’t imagining it. Upon approaching the gas station, my mind made it clear to me that it was indeed the very same I had visited so often as a child. I could hardly believe it was still standing here. The windows even had the same frost around the pane that they did when I was so young. If I was in my hometown of Durango, that meant I drove for 5 hours straight. How could I have driven for 5 hours without even noticing it? Walking into the gas station was like stepping into a time machine. The layout was exactly how I remembered it—just a 24 foot by 12 foot little building, three walls lined with freezers and refrigerators, the last wall hosting a few feet of space in which the cashier operated behind the counter. In the center of the store was one large rack to place various food products. The convenience store actually used to be separate from the gas ROAD TRIP 18 pumps. The attendants would stand by the pumps no matter the weather, and while they washed the windows and filled the tank, parents would bustle into the convenience store, sometimes with their children. I walked to the fridge opposite the counter. As clear as my mother’s finest glassware, the memories came flooding back like the alcohol that flooded into those same thin wine glasses. Mom and dad would always come to the back of the store to pick from the liquors. Mom, if she ever picked anything, would grab a wine bottle. She was enthralled by the step up to jug wine in the 70s. I wonder what she would think of that new boxed wine those Australians came up with. Though mom’s selections were sporadic, dad, without fail, would select a 6 pack of beer. I remember how from 1960-1970, the cost rose almost 30 cents in total. Every year or so, dad would grumble louder and louder about the uptick in price. Yet, nothing could keep him from his purchase. Whenever I tried to reach out for something behind that fridge door, my hand was slapped away. I found it hypocritical. At home, after special occasions, my parents were always conked out, sprawled into positions reminiscent of starfish and beached squids. They left their bottles lying around similarly, and I would inevitably come along and have a sip myself, noticing it was the only thing that could bring some level of peace to the household. Sometimes during the occasions themselves, they would give me a sip just for a good laugh. In fact, now that I’m thinking about it, dad always joked that mom put liquor in my formula to get me to go down as a baby. At least, it always seemed like a joke, but with the way she reacted to his jesting… I opened the fridge and grabbed a six pack from behind the glass. In my heart of hearts, I think I was trying to stick it to my parents by doing this—finally reach behind the glass without having my hands smacked away. Where’s your power now dad? I don’t ROAD TRIP 19 see your hand over mine anymore. Then I felt like an idiot trying to stick it to a couple of dead people. I brought the beer over to the counter where a short, wide man with a dark mullet and goatee was working the register. “Is that everything?” he asked with what I assumed was contempt in his voice, but hey, I get it. I wouldn’t want to be where he was either. I didn’t even want to be where I was. “Yeah,” I said resolutely. As the cashier clicked away at his register, I felt ignominious. My subconscious mind really wanted to shove it to my dad on this one, and all in all, it felt like I was an ant carrying a crumb, utterly unnoticed by the human being striding above. I looked to my right where there was a magazine stand. “You know, they used to sell comic books right here when I was a kid,” I pointed out, referencing the magazine stand. “Uh-huh,” was his only response. What was I doing? Two grown men, both of us probably hating our lives and ourselves, and I was trying to make small talk for some reason? That’s when I looked behind him to see some small shelves holding documents, belongings, fake IDs, and in the midst of it all, my book—the book that I published two years ago today. “Have you read that?” I asked, flicking my head up, noise pointing to the book. He looked up from his register to follow my gaze and saw the book on the counter behind him. “Oh yeah. Not a bad read. Are you interested? I could throw it in for a few bucks.” ROAD TRIP 20 Is there some kind of irony in trying to sell an author their own book without knowing that they’re the author? I imagine my father felt something similar to that irony when he picked me up from soccer practice as a kid, except in those instances, he didn’t want anyone to know that I was the product of his loins. If this book is to me as I am to my father, perhaps I was obligated to buy it, but instead I gave him a simple, “No,” and smiled. I don’t know what I was smiling out of, perhaps politeness. Maybe misery. I didn’t think it was possible to smile out of misery, but I do seem to be an expert at proving myself wrong. I carried the beers out to my car where I removed the nozzle from the tank and hooked it back where it belonged. Belonging. Whatever that means. I spent hours driving around my old neighborhood after that. I felt like a child in an amusement park, pointing out all the things I saw in the brochure and making a mental list of all the attractions to visit and in what order. In the end, I visited none of them, simply continuing to drive, drinking more than I should have considering I was at the wheel. There was the old steeple, the parking lot therein being the sight of my first kiss. It was a moonlit night and the large trees which surrounded the parking lot in garden patches hung over my date and me. There were so many types of trees. The pastor wanted the gardens to reflect the variety in God’s creations. There was the oak which climbed skyward, attempting to reach heaven like the Tower of Babel. The gardeners kept its lower branches from spreading too far so that it didn’t obstruct the parking lot, but once my friends and I reached a certain height, the tree made for a perfect jungle gym. So many variations of conifer trees, each attempting to prick rowdy children who climbed them, reminding them of doctor visits where they had to get their boosters, keeping them ROAD TRIP 21 a branch length away, unless they were trying to impress a girl, then they bore their crown of thorns, like me. I remember now that night that I had my first kiss, I tried climbing up that narrowleaf cottonwood tree. In the fall, its foliage looked like fallen snow made of gold, sticking to the branches like honey. In my mind, it was the perfect spot for my first kiss, but I fell flat on my back in my attempt to scale it. My date kissed me out of pity. But falling out of the tree wasn’t the only reason she felt sorry for me. As I lay flat, catching my breath, looking at the tree from underneath it, its branches zigged and zagged, like lightning bolts frozen in place. I tried to avoid it. I really did. I drove around those two miles of my neighborhood for as long as I could stand it, but just as the wind pushed the leaves down my sidewalk, there I found my car being pushed by some invisible force until it came to a complete stop right in front of my old house. That same force pushed me out of my car and placed me on the sidewalk, a beer bottle still in hand. I observed the lawn; the time for mowing was past. The cold stunted the growth of the grass sufficiently. Frost formed on the tips of the blades, dandruff on a flat green head of hair. A few trees remained in the lawn from my boyhood, just two. About 20 feet tall, papier-mâché planets on top of thin posts. In the summer they dropped those leaves that spiral downward like helicopter propellers. Downward spiral. I couldn’t help but glance inside the window of the old home. Whoever lived there now had a TV opposite the glass; they were watching some kind of sports aftermath. The Buffaloes played the Sooners today. Colorado lost 7 to 42. Dad would’ve hated that. He always assumed I was gay because I never got into watching sports the way he wanted me to. I always opted to read and write instead. ROAD TRIP 22 My father wanted to name me Heracles, as in, the Greek version of Hercules. He was strange in that regard, and my mother, in one of the best decisions she ever made, rightfully shot him down in that quest. I don’t know why he chose that name. I think it was a projection of exactly what he wanted me to be. Some kind of lion strangler or pig slayer, and of course, I was nothing of the like. And because my mother had so vehemently denied his request to imprint such a name and figure on me, he instead compromised with her on the name Herald, but not in its typical spelling, instead, its spelling as in a herald of something to come, and in my father’s case, I suppose the only thing that I brought about was his liver poisoning. I quickly turned my line of sight away from the window, knowing how concerning it would look to any passersby. Head turning, I realized the old wooden fence was replaced with a white segmented one, probably some heavy-duty kind of plastic. The fences stretched over our old lawn and onto the neighbors. I got curious and covertly made my way past the fence, knocking the frost on the grass around like dust on an abandoned library floor, leaving dew drops on my shoes. Making my way through the fence and past the old backyard, there it was, almost exactly as I remembered it. The abandoned grass field. My friends and I always shared our conspiracies on what was to become of the plot. The guesses started out as simply as “Oh, they’ll build another house back here,” until they transformed into “This is where they’re building the first North American pyramid,” or “The government’s gonna let the grass grow till it’s 50 feet tall, then hide the proof of aliens in there.” Walking out into the field, I hunched down and slid my hand over the tops of the grass blades. They tickled like dried rice grains falling off of one’s palms, and the cool ROAD TRIP 23 temperature of the night air left my hand with streaks of water droplets. I quickly had to put my hand back into my pocket because I could feel the dew starting to freeze around my skin. The grass was about 24 inches tall. We never knew who’s job it was to take care of it, but we didn’t complain. As children, we felt like explorers in the jungle, the grass coming up to our chests in some instances. It was like we were in that rye field, and Holden was catching us before we could fall off that cliff that he imagined. That deep end. Until one day we just never came back. We didn’t know it at the time, but one day would ultimately be our last day in the field. The last that the roly poly pill bugs would ever see of us, leaving them without a goodbye. The time to grow up, like dad always said. The normally dark blue night sky was slathered in gray this evening as the clouds blotted and choked the stars out in overcast. Though the clouds were on a violent prowl, they showed no sign of precipitation. They simply consumed the moon and stars out of spite. With what little light could seep into the frigid scene, I navigated my way across the great wilderness, bottleneck loosely between my pointer and middle finger, when out of the blue I just started talking. To whom? I don’t know. But of course, I knew. “Well. You got what you always wanted. I’m pathetic. Look at me. A grown man. Standing out here in between two backyards, getting my shoes and pants all damp.” I paused to take a deep breath, a swig, then another deep breath. I didn’t know what I was saying, where I was going, what was possessing me to do anything at this point. “I’m ruined,” I finally pushed up from my throat. “I didn’t want to admit it. But it’s true. I’ve got nothing left. It’s been two years now since the book. I really thought I had proved you wrong with that one. All that time growing up, my greatest fear was ROAD TRIP 24 never amounting to anything—being a nobody. But now I realize that I fear even more than that only amounting to one thing. If I amount to just one thing, then what am I? A fluke, that’s what. And a fluke is much worse than a nobody. Nobodies fly under the radar. They live without the pressure of any eyes on them. Flukes live in a panopticon, where editors and audiences and critics watch them stare at their second canvas, unable to splash anything on it. And one by one, each pair of eyes realize that there was no skill involved in the first canvas. Just luck. If there were any skill, it could be replicated.” I found myself falling backwards in slow motion, landing on my behind, feeling nothing throughout my entire body, only aware of my falling backwards because of my change in perspective. With a beer bottle now raised to the sky, a toast poured from my mouth. “Thank you, dad, thanks a lot, for giving me just enough pain to channel it into one concrete thing that everyone will forget. That was the ultimate grail on your part, wasn’t it? I thought once you were dead, that would be it, and yet, here you are still. Or rather, here am I still.” A real drunk idiot. Talking to his dead dad in an empty field. It was time for me to go. Just as I was about to get up, a crack rang loudly and forcefully through my skull almost instantaneously. A loud and large flash of lightning rang out in the distance, a pounding of thunder trailing behind it. The sudden whiteness and its accompanying noise sobered me up quickly, and I sprang to my feet. But before the lightning disappeared, with my bottle in the air, firing off my toast, for the split second of the perspective, it looked as though the lightning was slithering down from the sky, through the neck of my bottle, to its base. ROAD TRIP 25 Once the lightning sprung me to my feet, I had an idea. Followed by another idea. Then another. And there was suddenly just flicker after flicker of the lightbulb in my head, grass blades springing up from and growing off of one another, and I quickly started running back to my car where I fished rapidly for any and all of the papers in my glove compartment—car insurance, receipts, an old parking ticket—writing things down in an absolute fit. I wanted to make the drive back home so I could get to my desk, but I knew I couldn’t make it soon enough to keep all these ideas in my head. I stopped at a hotel where I kept writing on anything I could find until I passed out while drafting. When I woke up, I just kept writing. Was any of it good? I’m not sure. But something was clicking that hadn’t for a long time. As I wrote, it was pure dopamine being flooded in past some now broken barrier in my brain that had been there for years without me noticing. For too long, I had been writing inside of myself, my pen linked by a wire directly to my brain. Now, I was writing outside of myself. It was like the difference between being at home vs. being in that grass field. At home, all I could think about was my own identity—what my dad thought of me. In the field, I was unaware of any identity. I was completely disconnected from myself. And now, my writing was disconnected from myself too—from my reputation, my last book, my dad. There was an imbalance between the storm clouds in my mind, and the paper which was my ground, and a spark charged onto the page. ROAD TRIP REVISION 26 PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST I glared at the highway, displacing my anger as I drove to nowhere, all in a concerted effort to appease my superiors. The road became steadily less smooth the further south I drove, and the buildings became less and less populous. At one point I could look to my right and see buildings like mobs on a witch hunt, but now the land was barren, and the only thing threatening to stare me down with a pitchfork was selfconsciousness. Looking to my right, I saw clumps of shrubbery coming out of the ground, like remnants of failed bushes, unable to bud and give fruit in this wasteland. Behind these grids of clumps were bushes that were slightly more successful, growing and branching off the ground in weak gray and tan twigs. They fanned out from the ground up, perhaps trying to produce as much shade as possible for the desert dwellers, but the thoughtfulness was undone by the desert sun, too much for the poor, thin shrubbery. There was one bush that stood out from among the rest. I was no botanist, but I’d wager it was a different species entirely from the future tumbleweeds. It was at least somewhat green, though very light, and still with its mixture of khaki colors. The branches looked thicker. I wondered what it might’ve been had it grown in a different environment. If it could be tall and green like a real tree. The Colorado desert landscape had its layers. It was like a quiche or a casserole or a chip dip. The forefront of the landscape was that muted gray and tan mixture, and the further back the landscape pulled, the layers began to change—a light brown row of weak and weary shrubs, a light green layer from the plants that were so far out of focus that they must’ve been getting water from some unseen basin, and past that the mountains, a dark gray, a bit of black and brown that mounded up toward the sky. The heavens were a nice light blue this time of ROAD TRIP REVISION 27 day, the only fixture in the landscape that I was enjoying up to this point. As an artist, I at least had to appreciate the natural blend of colors the landscape provided, but the scenery and colors themselves were not much to gawk at. But the sky mounted its light blue with soft white clouds, transparent against the blue. The clouds streaked there, like the last bit of white paint on the paintbrush, not solid enough to cover the blue, just wispy enough to leave it open. Colorado was where I grew up, born and raised. I went away for college, but the magazine job ultimately pulled me back to Colorado. All roads lead yadda yadda yadda. Driving past these plains reminded me of my dad. For some reason, my father had drilled it into my head that my great great great great grandpa was one of the founding members of the Society of Colorado Pioneers back in 1872, and that my great grandpa was at the society’s last meeting in 1943. He took a lot of pride in those two facts, and he said if the society were still around today, he and I would certainly be among its members. I don’t know how true that was. The fact that the society disbanded the same year it consolidated with the Pioneer Women of Colorado had always said something to me—something that my father was never willing to say, or willing to research based on how much he knew seemed to know about the society. Still, as I drove along, I pictured the ghosts of those original pioneers who may have actually walked through this desert, just looking for inspiration in any shred that it was willing to show itself. I’d taken my leave in the morning, and my jacket was now crumpled up in the backseat. It was that time of year where the mornings were cold enough to make your hot breath leave an impression on the atmosphere, but the afternoons were so warm that it felt like your breath was coming back to push you to your knees. I steadily lowered the ROAD TRIP REVISION 28 temperature in my car hour by hour, wishing I were back at the office where the thermostat could regulate itself. “You look like you could use a break,” my Editor in Chief, Daniel, said as he placed a cup of water down on the table for me. The table was littered with printed cutouts of this month’s submissions. I was the Creative Director of our arts magazine, which meant I was in charge of designing the cover for each month’s issue, and approving the layout page to page, which I outsourced to my coworkers. “A break is the last thing I need,” I assured Daniel, taking the scattered cutouts and trying to arrange them in an interesting way. “I just think you’re overthinking it, Sarah. Maybe if you just looked at it all with a pair of fresh eyes.” I could only see him out of my peripheral, but I could tell he was looking at the water he’d placed before me, expecting me to drink it. I took the cup and set it on a chair behind me instead, not wanting it to spill and soil my work thus far. “Daniel, I’m this close, I promise I’ve got it,” I assured him again. But I imagine he could see the frustration behind my eyes. I think he noticed that I’d been slipping recently. I was constantly paranoid that he was going to fire me, even though I knew that wasn’t possible. I had a contract, so nothing short of inappropriate conduct could get me off the staff. But besides that, Daniel kept assuring me I was doing fine, and that he was simply worried about me. Lately, my covers had simply been compilations of submissions we’d received. It was an art magazine that we ran, so making interesting covers was never too difficult. Often, it would just be the most interesting submission of the month, or a few submissions stacked on top of each other, or, in some of the best ROAD TRIP REVISION 29 cases in my opinion, I would create a piece myself to be the cover. Last year, I won the 2021 Best Illustrated Cover award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, all for a cover that I’d painted myself—something that I felt encapsulated the spirit of the submissions we’d received that month. It afforded me a nice raise, and the notoriety was great. Frankly, I felt it was well-earned. I’d been busting my rear end for years in the magazine industry. Least they could do was notice. But ever since I’d received the award, I found it kind of difficult to paint again. Or to draw. Or to photograph. And I suppose that only added to my mounting frustration surrounding these covers. I think Daniel was trying to push me to do something original again. Or maybe he was just getting tired of how much time I spent deciding these days. I could only demand the best from myself, and I expected that’s what he’d demand as well. “I just think you should be proud of what you do,” he said. And what was that supposed to mean? Did I not seem proud to work here? Unproud to house all these creative, talented people? “Oh please, I’m dripping with pride,” I said snidely. I cleared my throat. Perhaps I was too hasty in responding to him. “Why don’t you just take the day off tomorrow? With pay. Drive around a little bit. Try to leave everything in the office for the day, and just take the day to be with your non-work self.” What non-work self? Everything I did—everything I am—I poured into my work. But he was the boss. And frankly, if I was being offered a day off with pay, I would’ve been a fool not to take it. ROAD TRIP REVISION 30 And so, at the big man’s behest, there I was, driving through Colorado, though work was very much still on my mind. I couldn’t turn it off, and I didn’t want to. I was an award-winning creative director, even I could turn a wasteland like this into inspiration somehow. But that thought escaped me as I noticed my gaslight come on. Guess I didn’t realize how long I’d been driving. Thankfully, there were signs for a gas station nearby. I was getting close to civilization again. I wasn’t sure whether to be thrilled or disheartened. A couple more miles, and there was the station on my right. It had just 3 doublesided gas pumps. I pulled into the one on the far left, my taillights to the station’s stop and shop. It would make for a quick getaway as soon as I was done here. Sliding my card into the machine, removing it with rapidity, I was greeted by the last thing anyone wants to see when refueling. Not an advertisement, instead a notice: “Please see cashier.” Ugh, absolutely not. I tried again, but the same message flashed at me with what I interpreted as rude and upfront pushiness, which just made me groan a little louder. I got back into my car and made a U-turn, pulling in on the other side of the pump. Much to my dismay, the same message flashed at me. I got back into my car once more, perturbed, and I flung around to a different machine, but of course, I had to come to the conclusion that machines were not faulty, instead it was my card. How absurd. It was working just fine the other day. Maybe these tanks were just too dinosaur to read the strip. I only had the one card today. I was driving light. I didn’t anticipate having to make any purchases while I was out. Which meant only one thing—I’d have to go inside and actually communicate face to face with another person. I hated just talking on the phone, ROAD TRIP REVISION 31 I much preferred a text, and this was a step up from merely talking over the line with a stranger. I took a deep breath and hiked my shoulders up as I went inside. I was so relieved to see a woman working the counter. I really did not want to have to deal with a man today, especially considering I was the only one in here with the clerk. I approached the counter and said, “Hi, sorry, I was just trying to buy some gas and the kiosk told me to come see you.” I held out my card over the counter, my forearm resting on the edge. She looked up from the magazine she’d had open, smiling at me in that customer service way. Her hair was raven, and her skin chocolate. “Oh, of course, sorry about that,” she told me in what sounded like a Caribbean accent. She wore a red polo shirt with some white accents at the sleeves and collar. It was company attire. I instantly admired her earrings; they were colorful dangling beads, arranged in a rhombus shape, fading in color, going from pearl to mustard to salmon to teal. She took my card from me and turned to the computer to the side of her. “And how many gallons are you purchasing today?” she asked. “Um,” I paused. I hadn’t had to calculate gallons in a long time. “Enough to fill my tank?” She paused this time, her smile widening slightly, probably amused by my response, but still trying to be polite. She looked out the window to my car. “Do you think 11 gallons will be enough to get you where you want to go?” I nodded, but I had no idea. “Yep, that should do it,” I said, feigning confidence. Why did I feel so insecure all of a sudden? Maybe because I wasn’t even sure where I wanted to go anymore. The plan was to turn back at this point, I think. But now I felt held ROAD TRIP REVISION 32 up for some reason. She was inputting my card information on the computer, and I couldn’t help but look behind her and observe the magazine. It was one of our publications—last month’s issue. There was the cover I designed. I smiled when I saw it. “Were you reading that?” I asked. She looked up from the computer and to me, then followed my line of sight. “Oh, yes, sorry, that should be on the rack, but I pulled it off. It looked kind of interesting.” That was flattering. I couldn’t help but smile. She handed my card back to me, and I asked, “Did you enjoy it?” She seemed to hesitate. “It was kind of weird,” she admitted. Weird? “What was weird about it?” “I can’t really put my finger on it. Would you like to see it?” I nodded my head instinctively, and she turned to lift the magazine from one counter to the other. I slid it towards myself and looked over the cover. Surely it wasn’t the cover that she meant was weird, right? It was just one of the amalgams I’d come up with—a snippet of three of the pieces from the issue stacked atop each other to fill the page. No, the cover looked fine. I opened the pages and began to question which of these pages I had approved that seemed weird. While I looked it over, she set my card down on the counter. “11 gallons,” she said, informing me of the completion of purchase. “You should be able to go right back out to the machine and it’ll pump for you once you select the fuel grade.” I took it she’d been living in the U.S. for a while. Her English was perfect. I don’t know what compelled me, but I asked, “You’re not from around here, are you?” I felt almost embarrassed for asking such an obvious question, and I immediately worried that I ROAD TRIP REVISION 33 might offend her with that question. Maybe I was just trying to justify to myself why she thought the issue was weird. She lightly laughed and said, “No, not from around here.” I nodded. “I was born and raised in Colorado,” I said. What was I doing? Sharing my private life with this clerk. She didn’t care. She probably wasn’t thrilled that I asked her about herself, despite the polite laugh and smile. We probably both hated ourselves, and I was just reminding each of us why. “Well, Colorado must be lucky to have you,” she said with such earnestness. Before I could reciprocate, she added, “Did you want that issue as well? It comes out to about $10 with tax.” I realized I still had my hands on the magazine. I could feel my face getting hot. There was something… poetic? Ironic? Well, there was something about being offered to buy my own publication. I felt… an obligation to this work. Like it was my baby. “Yes,” I said, looking her in the eyes with a firm and sure nod. She nodded, still smiling, taking the card back and running it for the magazine. I set the book down and she slipped it into a little plastic bag for me. “Will there be anything else?” she asked before completing the charge. I felt tempted to get a beer or something, but I just shook my head, taking the bag with my cover in it. She slid my card back to me and we exchanged well-wished goodbyes. I got out to my car, setting the bagged magazine in the passenger seat and heading off. The plastic bag was nagging me as I drove. Why did I buy that thing? What was I trying to prove? My thoughts were interrupted when I realized I hadn’t refilled my tank. ROAD TRIP REVISION 34 “Ah crap,” I bellowed. Luckily, I hadn’t driven very far. I made a quick U-turn on the desert road and headed back to the station, hoping the transaction I made would still be valid. I pulled back into the kiosk I’d been at before. It was still prompting to select a fuel grade, and I was relieved. After fixing the pump where it belonged, I just stood with my hands in my pockets, looking through the car’s window to see the bag there again. I quickly turned my head away from it, instead looking down the road to be driven, seeing a town—a city—off in the distance. I turned away, fixating again on the plains opposite the gas station. I sighed, then squinted, trying hard to see the ghosts of my ancestors, those who my father praised with such boldness for their trailblazing, for finding a land that was theirs and only theirs. I thought perhaps in the spirits of my ancestors I might find the spark I was looking for. The loud click of the gas nozzle woke me from my stupor as the switch flipped back into place. 11 gallons. I cleared my throat, rattling the nozzle against the tank’s edges to get the last drops out. After putting everything back in its place, I came back around to the driver’s side, looking up as I opened the door to see the kind clerk who I spoke to earlier. She had her head tilted down, reading another magazine. She smiled the whole time we interacted, I’d assumed for customer service purposes, but even now as she looked down reading, there were remnants of a smile on her face. That was so opposite to my own style of reading. Many people had pointed out to me how angry I looked when I read something. As I stood there, watching the clerk through the window, I kept thinking about that word—pioneer. ROAD TRIP REVISION 35 I hopped back in my car and began driving once more. I heard the plastic bag again, rustling as the air conditioner hit it. The crinkle and cry of plastic sounded so irritating, but only because it reminded me of my own failings. I pulled the car over to the side of the desert road. The sun was setting. Once the key was turned and the car was stopped, I grabbed last month’s issue out of its bag. I looked over the cover again. Weird. That word repeated in my mind. I tried to rationalize that it wasn’t so bad. Indeed, the artistry of the three pieces wasn’t bad, but the composition just screamed at me. I should’ve titled this issue No Original Ideas Here. A three-layered composition. It wasn’t even interesting enough to be droll. A drop of salty water hit the cover. Was I crying? I sniffed and lifted my head to ensure no more tears hit the paper. I coughed. Why was I crying? I looked outside the right side of my vehicle to see the layers of the desert. The sun was setting. How long had I spent staring at this magazine? Light gray, tan, light brown, green, dark gray, black, brown, and now a sky shifting to purple, and not an ancestor to be found along the desert floor. I was trying so hard to see my ancestors in that midst—to see the pioneers—but I was no such thing. I was no pioneer. The woman at the gas station, I didn’t even know her name, but she was a pioneer. I’d barely stepped foot outside Colorado. I’d barely stepped foot inside Colorado. I pulled my jacket out of the backseat and stepped outside of the car. I watched the sun making its slow descent behind the mountains, the sky becoming darker and darker, the clouds seemingly out of sight now against a blacker background. I just kept watching for a little while, but eventually, I began walking, step after step towards the mountains. And I just walked and walked. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 36 TORN DOWN October 31, 2021: Last Halloween, I made the grave mistake of wearing my old student government jacket as part of my costume. Wearing the jacket was not the mistake in and of itself, but instead, reaching into its pocket, discovering the receipt and the ticket stub from our first day as a couple. Imagine my surprise. Any normal person would have thrown those away. But I guess I’m sentimental. And not normal. February 23, 2018: We drove from the school to Chik-Fil-A; that’s where the receipt came from. Then from Chik-Fil-A back to the school, where we watched the basketball game; that’s why I had my student government jacket on that day. Then from the school to the movies; that’s where the ticket stub came from. Then from the movies to her house, where I kissed her on the cheek and went back home. She only lived two minutes from Brighton High, so I ended up driving past it again on my way home. May 31, 2018: On the cusp of graduation, just a few weeks after breaking up with her. This would be the last time I ever wore the jacket. Construction on the new building had already started. Next to the doors that led out of the choir room was a staircase that descended rapidly to “the pit”, where the late arrivals to school had to park. Through the brick walls of the choir room, we could hear them demolishing our pit, making room for new tennis courts, which was ludicrous because the current courts were only 5 minutes walking distance from the school. Piece by piece, inch by inch, they would pave away Brighton, but we would be graduated before we saw what became of it. Old Brighton had stood since 1969. Students mockingly and lovingly referred to the building as the Enterprise because of its circular makeup. Indeed, the school did look like a spaceship, or a snowman, or a discount version of that BB-8 from those new Star A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 37 Wars movies. The smaller circle, the 700 hall, housed the visual and performing arts rooms, including our beloved choir room. The 700 hall was connected by a small bottleneck to its bigger counterpart. The larger circle was home to two hallways—the 200 which was circumference by the 300. The 200 mostly harbored math and science while the 300 held the humanities, though this was never a hard and fast rule. Our American Problems course spread over two classrooms, simultaneously belonging to the 200 and 300 halls. Before we broke up, we used to sit adjacent in that class, sometimes holding hands across the aisle of desks, or me turning in my seat so that she could draw on my hand. I still laud her art as the best there is, and I wish her pen still slid softly over my skin. January 25, 2022: My sister taught math at Old Brighton for the majority of my time there. After having kids and many a skirmish with the parents of struggling students, she stepped away. In 2022, New Brighton discovered they were a little short staffed, and so my sister agreed to come back and teach just one class. I went to visit her, bringing her a bagel. I suppose that wasn’t my only motive, though. I honestly don’t know what I was hoping for when coming into New Brighton. Maybe I was searching for some remnant of myself. March 17, 2017: I felt absolutely on top of the world. We drove out into the center of the gym, right on top of that Bengal paw, ripped straight from the Clemson football team. We drove in a golfcart covered in blankets, so as not to prematurely reveal the results of the election. One by one, we revealed ourselves from the cart. I slid out onto my stomach for comedic effect. Once we were all out of the cart, our advisor handed me the microphone to excuse everyone. A few weeks later I would be chosen as the student body president. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 38 When people say they peaked in high school, well yeah, I really did peak in high school. Student government, Men’s Association, HOPE Squad, volleyball, chamber choir, and English sterling scholar. Like that soap opera— “Days of Our Lives”. Those were the days of my lives—err, life. Maybe. Now, I realize that of all the first world problems out there, this has to be the first worldiest. Oh, people liked me in high school, and I accomplished some things, now I’m not in high school anymore, boo hoo. But I still wonder, if I hadn’t done all of that, would she have wanted me the way she did? January 25, 2022: Upon driving up to the new school and finding a visitor’s parking space, the first thing of note was the enormous windows, spanning from the ground nearly to the roof of the heightened edifice. Due to its circular composition, few of the Old Brighton classrooms had windows, and if they did, it was usually reserved to two at the minimum. I checked in with the main office, and upon making my way out, that’s when the height of the new school really made its impact on me. Old Brighton was flat and long. New Brighton seemed tall and compact. I asked the worker in the main office how to get to my sister’s classroom, and she explained “Just go up the stairs, and it’s the first pod on the right.” Pod? What is this, the movie “Cocoon” (1985)? Once I made it, mostly by grace, to my sister’s classroom, she explained that all of the teachers were divided into “Pods”, small factions of classrooms that branch off from the main hallways. Those hallways were now elevated with skybridges connecting the pods. On the surface, it looked nicer than some parts of my own college campus. At Old Brighton, it was rare to ever go up or down stairs, and there was absolutely zero chance anyone would take a sky bridge. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 39 My sister gave me a small tour of the building, dropping me off at the choir room before being called away by a student who needed her help. The old choir teacher was still there—Mr. Emrazian—in his usual spot, seated right beside the piano. We always referred to him affectionately as Razin, or Raisin. Upon walking into his flex period, I said “Hey Raisin!” I could tell he didn’t immediately recognize me as he initially responded with a confused “Hey.” The mask didn’t help. Once he got a good look, it clicked, and he said, “Hey!” again, surer of himself this time, before making sure, “Jonah Wardell?” I confirmed his hunch, and after the formalities and the ‘How are you,’ ‘I’m good’, he asked, “You were in Colombia, right?” I confirmed that hunch as well, impressed by his memory, to which he explained, “I remember because I was in Venezuela, and that’s just right there next door.” March 27, 2018: “Dear Elder Wardell,” I read aloud to the room packed to the brim with my family, classmates, and neighbors; the group overpoured from my family room into the kitchen. I stood on my stone fireplace so everyone could have line of sight, and my voice could project to everyone in attendance. My hands were shaky, and my voice quivered slightly as I read the words off the letter that I starved to open all day. “You are hereby called to serve as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. You are assigned to labor in the Colombia Bogota South Mission!” Gasps and cheers rang up through the room at those words, and as I continued, I learned that I would report to the Bogota Missionary Training Center on June 27th. Three months. Crazy how much can happen in three months. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 40 When I stepped down off the fireplace, that was it. The whole thing was over. I spread my arms out at my sides and said “Welp,” indicating that everyone could go home, more joking than anything. Once back on the floor, she was the first one to come and embrace me. We hugged there in front of everyone, declaring that she was mine and I was hers. I thought that moment in Old Brighton’s gym, being declared a student body officer was when I was truly on top of the world, but if that was being on top of the world, then this was being on top of the clouds. The large group of attendees began forming a line to come hug and congratulate me, but she stayed close the whole time, and after everyone had gone, we sat on my living room couch, just holding one another. But eventually, it got late, and she had to go. Then I had to go. January 25, 2022: Raisin recommended a good Venezuelan place to me. As much as I loved the people of Colombia, I had to admit, their cooking was much worse than the Venezuelan immigrants. Once we got off that subject, I asked him how the program was doing. “Dolci,” the women’s choir, “has 18 members, and they’re as strong as they’ve ever been. But there’s only 16 in Madrigals, and a lot of them are sophomores.” That was truly shocking to me. That meant only 4 people per section. A stark contrast to my junior and senior year when there were 20 and 24 members of the choir respectively. And underclassmen in Madrigals? The highest level choir? That would’ve been heretical during my time in high school. Raisin went on, “Sometimes, I can’t help but think that I’m failing, ya know?” I definitely knew. “But then I talk to the directors from other A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 41 schools, and it seems they’re in the same boat as me, so that’s somewhat comforting.” Jeez. Rough time to be a teacher. I looked around the new choir room. It was much bigger than ours. The ceiling was incredibly high. There was a set of stairs within the room itself that led up to a balcony where the sectionals took place. Indeed, I could hear a few students working on their songs from up there, as well as out in the hall. “It all looks pretty good,” Raisin began, “but it’s pretty cheaply made under the surface. Like when we stack the chairs against the walls, it dents them. And the sectional rooms up there? They’re not soundproofed at all. And we warned them about that. They said, ‘It’ll be fine, we got it,’ but they obviously didn’t.” I felt bad for Raisin, and for his students. While the room did indeed look very state of the art, it lacked the charm of the 20-foot-ceilinged choir room of yore. She and I often held hands upon leaving the room, unashamedly walking to the 300 hall before parting ways until lunch. I often reread our old messages to each other and wonder just how pathetic that is. “Getchu someone who can finish your vine references” “Not to be racist or anything…” “What?” “You were supposed to finish my Vine reference :( ” “Oh no! I ruined it. Give me another chance” “Two bros, chillin in a hot tub?” “Five feet apart cuz they’re not gay?” A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 42 I would always send blue heart emojis, and she would always send yellow. The first time was Valentine’s Day, 2014. Her grandma had just passed away, and so I let her know I was there for her with a blue heart. The first time we officially met was at Bywater Park. I orchestrated a small volleyball game because it’s what I love to do, and much to my pleasure, it’s what she loved to do too. She was on the school’s volleyball team, her height affording her only the position of libero. It was funny to see us standing next to one another, with over a foot difference between us in height. I still remember the sunset on the sandy beach court of Bywater, tossing Kayla the ball so that she could set it up to me for a spike. My tosses were poor, but Kayla made the most of them. She always made the most out of my worst. January 25, 2022: “You are majoring in English?” Mrs. Mattson asked, in a tone as if she would bet $100 on the answer being yes. “English Teaching,” I responded, and her facial expression was enough to say that my answer was enough for her to win that hundred. “English Teaching?” she confirmed. “And what do they tell you about English Teaching these days?” By the way she pronounced these days, I assumed she was referring underhandedly to Covid. I responded accordingly to that supposition. “Oh, well, one of my professors is really sympathetic to everyone’s needs, and councils us to be too.” My supposition wasn’t quite right, however. “It’s a tough climate to be a teacher right now, especially English,” she half sighed. It then clicked that she wasn’t talking about Covid, but the new wave against CRT, a concept which none of its opponents actually understood, and of course the recent wave of book pullings in the U.S. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 43 I quickly agreed with her assertion once I realized what she meant. “I heard they pulled Romeo and Juliet in South Carolina. That’s just bonkers to me.” R+J was the first book I ever had to read in a high school classroom. Probably the most famous of Shakespeare’s tales, it truly baffled me that a place of learning could keep the play off its desks and shelves. “Well, it does end with a double suicide, and that can be traumatic for some.” I could agree to that, but the reason the book was pulled was actually for sexual content. I held back on offering that information, knowing how mad such lunacy would make her. “They pulled Toni Morrison’s other book here in Utah.” “The Bluest Eye?” she confirmed, knowing that her ‘other book’ meant not Beloved. “Well, they’re reviewing it now. I haven’t read it, but I’m sure whoever the parent is complaining about it hasn’t read it.” After saying so, I’m sure my face expressed how willing I’d be to bet $100 on her supposition. That’s when I saw, arguably, Bronte’s most famous book on her desk. “You’re reading Jane Eyre this year?” “Yes,” she responded with a sigh, almost of relief, “I decided I had enough of reading about crazy ubermensch axe murderers.” I couldn’t believe it. She took Crime and Punishment off of her curriculum. Honestly, for the better. I hated Crunishment, as we called it. Raskolnikov as a character is the worst. But maybe I only say that because I find myself too similar to him. “I’ve only got three years left after all. I thought I’d change it up.” “Three years?” I asked surprised. Seemed soon. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 44 “That’s right. I would’ve finished up sooner, but they actually penalize you if you retire early.” That was news to me. If I peaked in high school, then the best I could’ve done since then is plateaud—stayed at the same altitude since high school, but frankly, I don’t think that’s the case. I think I’ve only descended since then. And what did the future hold for me as an English teacher? Parents who oppose free thought and the marketplace of ideas? Students increasingly uneager to join programs? A retirement system that intends to screw me over if I decide I’m ready to settle down for good? April 21, 2018: Every year, choir and orchestra had a “tour”, where the two groups would journey to a different state to compete. Mrs. Mattson wasn’t wrong in saying that its only true function was seduction—a recruiting tool to get students to join choir—but we pretended it mattered, nonetheless. And this year, maybe it did matter. My first trip out of state with a girlfriend, and Kayla was no ordinary girlfriend, but the coolest girl in the world. We had bonded for two years as friends over our shared interests. She had the greatest sense of humor. We held hands across the bus aisle, not allowed to sit directly next to one another because of the past exploits of couples on the choir tour bus. Once we made it to California, we spent every free minute that we could together. One night, we went down to the hotel hot tub, but it was crowded and unromantic. Still, I loved every second I spent with her, no matter the crowd. One day of tour, while walking to an attraction at Knott’s Berry Farm, palms clasped against each other, Kayla made a joke. I forget what it was, but it just caused me to look down at her and smile, unresponsive, just smiling. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 45 “What?” she asked innocently, still riding the high of her hilarity. “I love you,” I managed. That’s when she stopped walking, though her smile didn’t fade. Her pausing confused me, so that’s when it was my turn to ask “What?” I was so wrapped up in my own little world, that is, her—she was my world—that I didn’t even realize what I had just said. It was the first time. It just slipped out. “I love you too,” she soothed back softly, her smile never escaping as she pulled my hand, beckoning me towards her, and embracing me, uncaring of the crowd. I always thought the time that it just slipped out would be the time I really meant it. But I was just left uncertain. I was too much in my own head. I had said “I love you” so much in past relationships that it stopped meaning anything, and ultimately led to the demise of my former connections. Did I mean it when I said I loved Kayla? Whether I meant it or not, I was afraid. Will I ever get past my fear? February 3, 2022: I drove to the school just before evening hit. I took the backroads, so as to stay as far away from Kayla’s house as possible. It had been a long time since I drove up that hill with the sun so low. It was dangerous, it was blinding. And I sat there in the back parking lot, confronted with that juggernaut that is the indoor field. It hadn’t been there when I went to school. As I look upon it all, it looks so state-of-the-art. Those kids who go here now; they must be so blessed. The football field looks about the same. But that had always looked impressive, as football was what used to be Brighton’s selling point. The bleachers are still there, though different now. There used to be a short cement wall that divided the A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 46 track from the bleachers, where we had painted our handprints. The school above the bleachers was no longer curved. Just boxes of glass and brick. The moon taunts me from the place where it’s pinned in the sky above this parking lot, reminding me of the large letter B that used to stand just 20 feet beyond the closest parking space to the football field. It was in that large letter B where students would kiss through its upper puncture, thereby becoming a “True Bengal”. The moon was taunting me that night as well, when they all went to true Bengal and I wasn’t invited. I had to find out about it the next day when someone asked why I hadn’t come. I wish I had been there. Because she was there. And as the moon mocks, suddenly I am everywhere and everywhen all at once. The moment I found those remembrances of you in my jacket, the moment we were given those stubs in the first place, when we hugged at my mission call opening, when we held hands leaving the choir room, when I told her I loved her, and I feel as though my head is about to explode and the fragments splatter on my car windows so the next day the police find me, a 22 year old Brighton alumnus, from the neckdown, and think He must’ve offed himself because he couldn’t get past high school. And maybe I couldn’t—I mean, can’t. Maybe I can’t. I do feel rather headless. I’ve felt that way since I lost her. What am I doing here? Grown, and in the back of some high school. It’s time for me to drive home. I wanted to have some grand revelation before I did. Some assurance that things will get better. That I will get better. I hope things are better for her. And I wish she somehow knew how badly I want to be better for her. May 4, 2018: 8:49 p.m. A yellow heart. 8:50 p.m. A blue heart. The last messages we ever sent as a couple. The only remnant I have left of her, besides that receipt and that ticket stub, which still remain in my jacket pocket. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS 47 A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 48 TORN DOWN I was sobbing in the middle of a church parking lot, and I don’t use the word sobbing lightly. I’m rather stoic, so when I cry, it’s not just crying, it’s weeping. I was making ugly, loud gasps, not sure when it would end. I didn’t even think it would start, but once it did, I was like a broken faucet. Amidst all my crying, I could only think one thought—I wish Amanda were here right now. “Remind me who you were friends with?” asked Brother Bell as we sat at the conference table, summer of 2022, preparing for the new school year. The other seminary teachers surrounded the rest of the table—four gentlemen in shirts and ties, just as if they were at church. “Umm, I was friends with a lot of people,” I responded with a light chuckle. “Well, right, I remember you were the SBO President. But who did you mainly hang around?” “Let’s see… mostly the choir people. I don’t know if you remember Brendan Jacobson or Hannah Hyde.” Brother Bell nodded, smiling, reminiscing on his early days of teaching. “Yeah, of course, I remember those guys!” he said happily, refreshing himself on the year, the circumstance, and me. I never had his class, but he knew of me and my friends. “Did you ever have Amanda Lowry?” I asked. “She was kind of quieter,” I added, since Amanda always touted herself as being shy and unwilling to comment in class, though I always knew that wasn’t the case. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 49 He paused to think about it before responding, “Yeah, I remember Amanda. But I never considered her quieter.” “I knew it!” I said with a laugh, and I couldn’t wait to inform her that Brother Bell said that about her. “She’s actually my girlfriend now,” I informed him, “But she’s on her mission.” I went on to answer their usual mission questions—where she is, how long’s she been out, how long you dated beforehand, yadda yadda. She was in the Dominican Republic, and she’d been there for about 10 months out of the 18 months that Sisters serve, as opposed to the Elders who go on a full 2-year religious mission. Amanda and I met in high school—here at Brighton. In fact, the seminary was a big part of what brought us together. My senior year, her junior year, we both had the same after school seminary class where we would sit next to each other for a full trimester. We would date on and off in our time together, and she became my best friend. Brighton high school would be torn down the year just after I graduated. At the time, I found it highly symbolic since I was so obsessed with poetry; it was like I could leave everything behind in the school that was to be demolished, the rubble being destroyed and relocated, taking every bad decision and bad memory of mine with it. Of course, the one thing that hadn’t been torn down, or even touched for that matter, was the seminary building. In Utah, due to the prominence of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, high schoolers have the option to take seminary, a religious course that provides no school credit, but resides there as an option for young Church members to build their testimonies of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. When I served my own mission, I realized I loved to teach the gospel, and I soon enough found my way in the seminary teaching program. With the way the program works, you don’t apply to any A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 50 school in particular, rather, you apply to the Church, and the Church can then send you wherever is most convenient for you and for them. Since I still lived with my parents, Brighton was one of the most convenient places I could be sent to teach, so all of a sudden, I was sent back to my old stomping grounds, rather surreally. Walking down these old religious halls, I find that the more things stay the same, the more they change. I was made to believe that high school would be an integral part of my life thanks to the movies and TV shows I absorbed as a kid, and high school was indeed a time of molding for me. Even as I write this now, those 4 years were a good 17% of my life—21% really since I can’t remember anything from ages 0-4. How cruel that the most carefree moments of my life would be lost to memory. Now life relegates me to this—thinking of the moments that I’ll never recapture, nor get to redo. I felt as though I’d only changed for the worst after high school, my bad qualities sticking with me, all of my good qualities torn down brick by brick. I really find it quite pathetic and a little sad to say so, but sometimes I quite miss high school. The older a person gets, the more responsibility they have—a novel observation, I know, read further for more impressively unique takes. More than that, though, everybody wants to feel like a somebody, and I never felt like more of a somebody than when I was in high school. Choir, National Honors Society, plenty of AP classes, debate, Model United Nations, and of course, the thing that my friends make fun of me for, Student Body President. I don’t mean to sound haughty when I say that likely everyone in school knew my name, particularly from “Bengal News” as we called it, where I hosted Word-Up Wednesday, a segment for teaching vocabulary. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 51 Sometimes I regretted some of the things I did in high school. I remember telling Amanda once, “I wish I hadn’t done student government in high school.” “Why?” she asked. “I just wish I had focused on my other classes more, and the Gospel.” She thought about that for a bit before responding, “Well, maybe you would’ve been better off that way. But I think doing student government made you more confident. And had you not been so confident, you might’ve never approached me.” She may have had a point. Even if there was a shred of truth to that, then I suppose student government was all too worth it, because after my mission, Amanda and I got to date steady for over a year. And in a sense, everything in my life had led up to me teaching seminary, which I really loved to do, so perhaps I had to chalk it all up to fate. I loved my new classroom, my new students—many the siblings of those students I myself had gone to high school with. To connect with the kids I taught—my brothers and sisters—I told them of my own experiences at Brighton. I often found myself talking about Amanda. I could talk about her for hours on end, and most of the students, particularly the sisters, thought it was cute when I would slip into my experiences with my now girlfriend. So, imagine my shock and embarrassment and devastation when she dumped me. She emailed me on Monday, her preparation day, as missionaries are allowed to, writing: This week our mission president announced a new rule that we aren't allowed to communicate with anyone other than family on pdays. After lots of crying and praying I have decided it's a stupid rule that I don't understand. But I know I need to be obedient. So this means we won't be able to talk. And I've thought a lot A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 52 about this and I can't be your girlfriend if I can't talk to you. It's not fair to ask you to wait for me in the first place, but especially if I can't even write you. I hope you know I love you, and I hope you understand. It's just you're starting the new semester [at the University of Utah] and have an opportunity to meet new people and it's not fair of me to keep you from that because it's not fair to be in a relationship with someone you can't talk to. And if you're not with someone when I get home I would love to figure things out then. I also would still love to hear from you, about what you're doing (if you're not too mad at me), I just won't be able to respond. I'm really really sorry. I hope this makes sense. My heart dropped on reading each word after the other, and I had to respond immediately. Suddenly the best part of my week, receiving communication from my love, had become my worst nightmare. I typed frantically to send: Hi Amanda. I don't completely understand. Not because of anything you said, your explanation was very succinct and easy to follow. I just don't understand why your President would make that rule. But I'm not there, and I'm not the one who has stewardship over you or receives revelation for you right now. I know you probably won't be able to respond to this email, but I just need to rattle off some things that I'm feeling. I still want you to be my girlfriend, and I still want to be your boyfriend. I very much want to wait for you, even if I can't keep getting communications from you. I've been waiting almost a year, another 6 months is well worth it. So I want to wait for you unless that's really not what you want, and only in the event that you don't want to get back together when you come home. If you don't want to be with me again, then I can really respect that, and even though A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 53 it'll break my heart, I can try my best to move on. But if you're telling me there's a chance that we can still be together when you get back, then I'm going to wait. I'm not mad at you at all, I know this rule wasn't your choice. I'd be so happy to continue to update you on my life, if that's not annoying for you. I understand if you'd want to devote all of your time to communication with your family. I know this must be really hard, and not even for my sake, but for everyone you'd like to communicate with besides me. I'm really sorry about this rule, that's so tough. But I'm beyond proud of you for choosing obedience. I wouldn't have expected anything less from you, you're just the best missionary in the world after all. I rambled a lot, I'm sorry. My point is, I want to wait for you. I want to be with you again. I don't want to date anyone else. Unless you want me to let you go--for reasons of us not working out in the long run--then I'm going to continue to wait for you. This must be a very confusing and hard time for you, I'm sorry. I know you'll be able to find strength throughout. I'll look forward to your group emails even more now. I love you. I hope this response makes sense too. I wanted to say it perfectly. I hope it makes sense. Just remember I love you and I want to be with you all the time, now and forever. I didn’t expect a response from her what with the new rule she’d explained to me. But to my strange mixture of joy and anxiety, she did respond: I’m sorry, I just can’t be your girlfriend like this. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 54 I had to sit and let that one stew for a couple of minutes. It was just so hard to believe. But the fact that she had responded meant there was at least some hope, right? So I fired back another short email: That’s okay, I won’t label you as my girlfriend anymore if that’s what you want. Can you be honest with me, though? Do you want me to wait for you? Do you want it to be you and I after your mission? No response. Denial. Surely, she didn’t actually break up with me. I simply couldn’t possible accept that as a reasonable reality, not after everything we’d been through. I showed the message to friends, to my parents, some pointing out that since she wanted to “figure things out” when she got back, that meant she still wanted me. Others playing into the mindset that I feared so gravely—that she was simply letting me down easy, not wanting to hurt my feelings by breaking up with me in a blunter fashion. The breakup was an unexpected left hook; unaccounted for so much so that it practically broke my jaw. Everything else in my life seemed to be going so well. I was teaching, something that I loved to do, and not just teaching any old thing, but the Gospel, the thing Amanda and I loved most in the world. I couldn’t even bring myself to cry about it because I was just utterly doubtful that Amanda would ever truly dump me. She told me repeatedly how much she loved me, often comparing her love to mine, saying it was stronger than I could even comprehend. She had some insecurity, justifiably if I’m being honest. I was not a very good friend to her in high school, and never a truly A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 55 great boyfriend. Maybe it’s better this way. She can have someone who actually deserves her now. My birthday soon passed, and I expected at least something from her—maybe a notice from her mother that Amanda sought to wish me happy birthday through her—but no. In general, I expect nothing less from her than the most stalwart obedience. And perhaps she felt awkward to try and send me any kind of communication after breaking up with me. In spite of that, I still wrote her each week, just as I would normally, though, now I didn’t write ‘I love you,’ at the end of my communications. With a few more days, I received an email on Monday. I hoped it would be her, or at least her group email that she sends out to her entire mailing list. Not so. It was from one of the student’s parents I teach. Hello, This is Amy, Brooke’s mother. I just wanted to address a couple of concerns I have with you. Did she mean concerns in general that she wanted to touch on with me? Or concerns that she has about me? Already my stomach was twisting. Brooke told me that on two separate occasions, she has been asked to stay after class to speak with you. She says that she’s the only one asked to stay and that no one else has been asked to do this. I understand, at the first meeting, that a few questions were asked to her and she was told that you enjoyed her insights in class. A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 56 My husband and I feel that asking her to stay after class is inappropriate. Especially with no other students there. It also makes Brooke uncomfortable, especially since there is no context given as to why the meetings are needed. I told her after the first time, she was allowed to decline the request to stay if it came up again, which is why she did today. I don’t want her feeling uncomfortable. Is there a problem with Brooke in class? Is there a reason for these requests for her to stay? In the future, if you need to address an issue with her, please feel free to do so via email to her and me. We’d be happy to figure out a solution. Please do not ask her to stay after again. I felt like throwing up. Sure, she didn’t outright say it, but the undertone was clear. I was being accused of inappropriate conduct with a student. While I might not need to iterate how astronomically unlikely it is that that would happen, let me just say: that would never, ever happen. Somewhat ironically, I love my students too much to ever even think about it. And yet, my actions were being misconstrued here. Terrible misconstrued. My thumbs fired rockets to type out a response on my phone, terribly afraid that I might make the situation worse with whatever I might say to defend myself. Ultimately, I landed on this: Hi Sister, I’m so, so sorry, I had no idea it made Brooke uncomfortable, but I assure you, she is not the only one I have had stay after class. I normally do this simply for the purposes of getting to know the students a little better and animate them—help them feel excited for seminary and whatnot. Last week, I just had students fill out slips A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 57 regarding the seating chart and the way the seats are arranged in class because I recently changed the arrangement. Brooke said she preferred the old way and I just wanted to ask her why because I value her opinion and she was the only one who said so. I normally wouldn’t have had her stay a second time after that first individual meeting, I just wanted her thoughts. I really do want to sincerely apologize again, I feel so extremely bad for making her feel this way, I had no idea. I won’t ask her to stay again. By no means are there any problems regarding Brooke, she’s great. I feel awful, I really am sorry. Thank you for reaching out to me, please let me know if there are any other concerns. You can also reach out to the principal, Randy Johnson. I felt I explained myself to the best of my ability. Minutes passed, turning into hours, and I was just feeling so overwhelmingly sick; my grief was truly ineffable as I simply waited for a response. I was holding back tears at the whole ordeal. I tried to listen to the Holy Ghost, God’s guiding messenger. I felt impressed to get in my car. I thought I was past the point of crying, but once I got in the car, it came flooding unstoppably like a bullet once the trigger’s pulled. I just sat there and cried for minutes and minutes, time seeming to parade into obscurity as I felt like the pain would never stop. I felt impressed to drive to a church, so I composed myself and tried to wipe away tears long enough to be able to see where I was driving, but I still cried the whole way there. I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess I thought there might miraculously be some person waiting at the church parking lot, someone who felt prompted to be there as well specifically to help me. I felt delusional when I saw the empty parking lot with just A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION 58 me in it. At least I could cry without the risk of being exposed. So, I went on and on, just sobbing, hoping that something outside my own forces would be able to stop all of this. But my mind reeled with possibilities. I had been accused of perhaps the most heinous crime a teacher could commit. What was going to happen? Would they have to transfer me? Would I be fired? I trembled at the thought. I was enjoying Brighton so much; getting to know these kids, many the younger siblings of people I cared about in my time there. The Brighton seminary reminded me of the person I used to be—well-liked, kind, an achiever, the kind of man Amanda wanted to be with. The school itself was torn down, no remnant of me left, but I survived in the seminary, and soon that was likely to be taken from me as well. What would there be left of me if I weren’t a seminary teacher anymore? I would be utterly torn down to the rubble. Demolished and left in pieces that go nowhere. And while I cried and cried and cried, the thought that recurred most of all—more than being transferred, being fired, being remembered as an evil, heinous man—was the thought of Amanda sitting next to me in the passenger’s seat, leaning over the console to hug me and console me. She always knew what to do when I cried. A shocking matter of fact since I felt I cried so little in general. I’d probably cried more times under Amanda’s vision than I ever had before in my life up to that point. Perhaps I felt comfortable enough to cry around her. Her and only her. I felt possessed, but I ended up driving my car from the church to outside Amanda’s house. It was almost 9 in the evening at this point, but I walked up to the door and knocked regardless. I thought maybe if Amanda’s parents could come and talk to me, A PLACE THAT NO LONGER EXISTS REVISION that would be good enough. But they didn’t answer, and I went back to my car, just stewing, stewing, sobbing, sobbing, with no reason left to continue building myself up. 59 7 DIRECTIONS 60 THE COLORS ONLY SHRIMP SEE Front: With my companion’s gasp, the new scene directly in front of me was the image of a toothed bread knife whose tip was pointed right between the ribs of my companion, Elder James. The knife’s wielder had, just a moment ago, been behind us. We could hear his footsteps quickly approaching after he called out “Ey!” In my naivety, I hoped he was somebody interested in learning the gospel; Elder James and I were missionaries together in Colombia, and to have strangers approach us wanting to learn about our beliefs was not uncommon. It was not so this time. The knifeman grabbed Elder James by the shoulder, turned him, and had his chest quite literally balanced on a blade’s edge between life and death. With Elder James’ frightened gasp, he dropped the platano chips that he was holding, putting both hands up, though keeping the Book of Mormon in his other hand, level with his head. Elder James was a tall man, 6’4”, from Michigan, with hair as thoroughly blonde as a wheat field; I was also a tall gringo, so among the Colombian ñeros, Elder James and I looked like green apples on the lowest branches of the tree. Our assailant was tall for a Colombian, with light skin. His hair was brown and buzzed on the sides, not an uncommon haircut, coming up into a flattop above with pointed ends. His eyes were light, one of the occasional pairs of greens that one might see in Bogotá. A red flannel with the sleeves torn off draped his shoulders, unbuttoned to reveal another sleeveless shirt underneath, a gray T, topping baggy black jeans with many rips, tears, and holes in the legs. This was a man who was unfazed and uncaring of the city’s cold, uncaring of much more than that, clearly. My eyes were agape, like window rafters pushed open by the wind in a violent storm. My nose was plugged by the breathlessness of Medusa’s stare over my body. 7 DIRECTIONS 61 Past the robber was the open green gate of this community, which was the safest and most suburban-esque part of our proselyting area. Most houses in Colombia were as compact as trash cubes, stacked directly one on top of the other, side by side, but the houses in this neighborhood left room to breathe, even including patches of grass occasionally, rare for the city. It was only 3 in the afternoon. About 30 yards ahead of us, the streets of the locality of Kennedy were hustling and… well, I forget the other word, with the sounds of honking and erratic bumper to bumper near-crashers, just past the open gate ahead of us. The locality used to be named Ciudad Techo—Roof City. It was renamed Kennedy in ’63 in honor of John F’s visitation two years prior. His assassination sparked the name change. We were nearly out of the community just before we were stopped—just two blocks to the open gate, now facing down our own potential Lee Harvey Oswald. “El celular. El celular!” he repeated louder, clearly ready to make a move at any second. Elder James acted quickly, sliding the phone out of his pocket. It was new; smartphones had never been issued before in our mission. Before, we had the flechitas— little phones that only served to make calls and send simple texts. Just our luck that only a few weeks into this new world of organization, learning, and contacting, it would be stolen from us. We could only lament this after the fact however, because in the moment, we were willing to let anything be stolen from us as long as the bargaining chip of our lives was left in our hands. At the exchange of the phone from one set of fingers to another, the knife was turned to me, causing me to become unpetrified, just for a moment, and drop the Colombian equivalent of Cheetos I was holding, keeping the Book of Mormon in my hand. 7 DIRECTIONS 62 Our attacker’s choice in knife made me curious. It was a kitchen knife, no different from those my family used at home in the U.S. to cut our chicken. I wondered, did this man take this knife from his drawer? Was the weapon itself something he stole from a home invasion? Was this a common routine for him, or his first time? It didn’t seem like the kind of weapon an experienced thug would use in the Colombian underworld. That said, no matter what kind of look it has, the metal it’s made form, or the chest it’s pressed up to, a knife’s a knife. What was it like in his shoes? If his knife was the very same I had back in the states, what else united he and I? My lamb white shirt in front of me bounced between my pectorals and my obsidian overcoat as a result of the pounding in my chest. In my front pocket, I could feel my slip-in black nametag with its white lettering: “Élder Wardell La Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Últimos Días”. Behind la placa, nestled in the pocket was the missionary manual, or, the White Bible, as it had been referred to by missionaries for ages, and behind that my daily planner, smacking against my chest in rapidity despite the near slow-motion of the moment. “Y el tuyo!” He was asking for my phone too. Elder James quickly interjected: “Él no tiene!” which was true, I didn’t have one. It was only one phone per companionship. Besides my heart, I was frozen, but the words escaped my lips, the soundwaves forced out of a throat closing in fear, agreeing with Elder James: “Sí, no tengo.” He kept the knife six inches from me, whereas with Elder James, he had pressed the tip right up against his ribs. If this man were to jab, I could only pray he hit my pocket, where the combination of nametag, manual, and planner might stop his weapon in its tracks. His 7 DIRECTIONS 63 face was nearly impossible to read. He was clearly in a hurry, wanting to make this as fast as possible, but whether he believed the truth in our shared singular telephone story was unclear. With the weapon drawn at me, my daily planner bumping against my body, I couldn’t help but recall that morning. Back: Behind us was the sidewalk we trailed to arrive at our current altercation. A real sidewalk too; some of my other areas had dirt roads rather than pavement. The rainy city made dirt roads rather dangerous from an infrastructural lens. Going backwards past the sidewalk was the little store from which we bought our snack bags. Many Colombians ran convenience stores out of their homes, convenience being the operative word. It was miraculous to be able to turn any corner and find a place to buy a bag of water or some bread, and los Colombianos did not mess around with their bread, that stuff was seriously manna. And the price; a bag of Cheetos in the states? $3.49. Same size bag in Colombia? $0.66. Although, that seemed to matter little now considering the current situation. Was I going to die surrounded by the cheese puffs I just dropped on the ground? Elder James suggested we buy the snacks because, I’m sure he could tell just as much as me, we were feeling a little tired and disanimated—err, excuse me, that’s the Spanglish. Discouraged! That’s the word. We had been looking for a specific address a few blocks back, thus, we pulled the phone out for just a moment to verify the whereabouts. We always figured that incited the incited—that our assailant from behind saw the new phone we were carrying and knew how easy it would be to take. I could still hear the music playing out of that store, and another closer to us, still behind my back. 7 DIRECTIONS 64 The clashing speakers blared with accordion, guitar, vocals, a few brass instruments, like St. Peter’s trump which sounded ever closer in this instant. We had planned to come to this neighborhood the selfsame morning. We logged it in both the phone, and our daily planners, getting used to the transition. I remember that morning thinking about the allegory of the cave. Metaphysicality is often something one thinks about when seeking to answer religious questions all day. In the allegory, Plato describes a group of people born into a cave, chained by their legs and necks to face the back wall. The only thing in their view is shadows cast on the wall from an unseen fire behind them. Since these cave dwellers have never seen anything but these projections, the shadows are their only concept of reality. When a prisoner is set free, and turns around to see the object casting the shadow, will he then know that the outline is a lesser copy of reality? And, if there is something more real than the shadow, could it be that there is something more real than the object? For Plato, this greater reality is the realm of being, whereas our reality is the realm of becoming. Becoming what? Well for me, I would be coming face to face with mortality as the impressions of my shoes behind me stopped in place in the most dramatic fashion. My dad had a gun pointed at him on his mission. He knew he would be all right. In the Church, members are given patriarchal blessings—an ordinance administered by the laying on of hands which announces promises, guidance, and counsel for its recipients. In my dad’s patriarchal blessing, he was promised children, so he knew he wouldn’t die. The Holy Ghost brought no such promises to my remembrance in my bout with attempted murder. My patriarchal blessing didn’t say anything about not having to 7 DIRECTIONS 65 sustain any stab wounds. My coat felt heavy; it was pulling down on my shoulders and spine, like if I were to just fall backwards and play dead, I would be safe. Left: On my left side were the houses closest us, being on the left side of the street. These houses were perfect rectangular prisms, no slanted roofs, no risky architecture, just a simple box. The house most immediately to our side was a reddish pink, another sign of the slightly higher status of this area. Most houses were the color of the material they were built in, or just a plain white, but this street was lined with reds, avacado greens, limestone blues, and other precious pallets. The doors were all metal, which created a loud enough knock when tapping a pen or ring against it. Some of those doors we had been knocking just moments ago, with few openers. If they had been at home and were simply dodging “los Mormones” it would be awkward for them to come out now, trying to help the poor skinny white boys with the knife against them. Though, I doubt anyone could actually observe the scene. It was happening in such close quarters. Right: To my right, there were people across the street. Some were carrying groceries. Others walking their dogs. And others still just making their way to and from work, I assume. The grocery bags were a cheap plastic, the kind that all the little shops gave out. For more specified groceries, people would go to Éxito or Justo y Bueno, but those didn’t appear to be the kind of bags that these neighbors of ours were carrying. The dog was white and miniscule, exactly the kind that would be domesticated in the city. I wondered if these pampered dogs contributed at all to the high population of the country’s strays, one of which bit me right on the calf. It barely broke skin; cleaning the bite with rubbing alcohol was more painful than the attack itself. That dog bite felt telegraphed by the Holy Ghost, but I ignored the prompting and a dog named hindsight 7 DIRECTIONS 66 immediately bit me for it. Interestingly, this attack from the knifeman was in no way telegraphed to me. As for the Colombians on the other side of the street who seemed to be coming to and from their careers, they were bundled in blazers or long sleeves, making their way along the sidewalk hurriedly. I wish I could’ve seen them a little closer, gotten to know them. Asked them if they wanted to hear our message. What was it like living their lives? What was the back wall of their caves? I glanced at these people as quickly as I could, praying that they might see this— that they might help. I had to wonder, if I were in their zapatos, would I somehow help? It would be my obligation, wouldn’t it? Especially as a missionary. But entering a knife fight unarmed seems reckless. Is God a God of recklessness? Then again, is God a God who lets his servants be held at knifepoint? My glance was quickly turned back as I didn’t want my assailant to think I was trying anything funny. Below: Immediately beneath me was the pavement, which felt even harder than usual against the thick souls and heels of my shoes. The shoes were made particularly for missionaries—people who had to look professional but spend a great deal of time walking each day. They were not made for falling in response to stab wounds. I wondered how my body might feel if it were to collapse against that harsher-than-usual sidewalk below. On one side of the sidewalk was the uncommon patch of grass, almost never to behold in the city. I suppose if I were to get stabbed, I could try to place my fall to the left, thereby landing in the grass rather than the sidewalk, but my body was unresponsive to my brain at this point. My central nervous system had just completely shut down, like my spine had been taken straight from my body; purloined by a cat burglar. On the grass and pavement were the scattered banana chips and cheese puffs my 7 DIRECTIONS 67 companion and I had bought to enjoy, as short lived as such enjoyment was. The bags were also on the ground next to what they had just been containing, and I felt I would quickly be joining the litter. Above: The light wind played with my hair momentarily. Windy season was approaching in Bogota. In the distance behind me, a bystander would be likely to see the kites high up in the air. Bogota only had two seasons really: windy and rainy. Above the wind were the clouds, gray, but thin and light enough to let sunshine come through, albeit lightly. It was about 4 p.m., so the sun was high, but making its descent. Faintly, one could hear the occasional plane in the air. It was on one of those planes that I entered the country, and on one which I thought I might leave in about 10 months. But my departure seemed a little different now that I was about to be minced like my chicken at home. Kennedy was only about 25 minutes from the Bogotá International Airport, or El Dorado as it’s called, the fabled city of gold built by the Muisca people, the pre-Colombians. The average observer might look on Bogotá and think the label “El Dorado” was ironic. But for someone like me, who had been there for a year at this point, I knew there was indeed more gold than one could count in Colombia. It was in the hearts of the people. Inside: It may seem disingenuous for me to say the Colombians have hearts of gold while describing a scene in which one of them robs and is about to kill me, but it was true. My heart had been softened by their loving kindness to me time and time again. And I could feel how soft it truly was now that it was about to beat right through my ribcage. In the Church of Jesus Christ, we believe that people on earth are comprised of two things: a body and a spirit. While we know there is a clear intimate relationship 7 DIRECTIONS 68 between these two halves of the soul, their directionality is unclear. For simplicity’s sake, we often say that the spirit resides inside the body. On my mission, we often used a glove as an object lesson. On its own, a glove is just an object, but when a hand is inside of it, the glove suddenly moves. A spirit is what makes a body an agent rather than an object. When we die, our spirits depart from our bodies until the day of resurrection. With my breath frozen in my lungs, I feared that if I exhaled, my spirit would escape my body and reunite itself with the souls of my lost loved ones. My assailant swung the knife. He swung it downwards slowly, and to his side. Using the back of the hand in which he held the phone, he reached out to me and quickly felt my torso, feeling around the potential pockets that lay inside my overcoat, then slid down and felt the pockets at my side. In this swift motion, he seemed convinced that I had no phone, and he brushed my shoulder with his as he walked away. The great beyond: The 8th direction. In John chapter 9, Jesus and his disciples pass a blind man. The apostles ask, “‘Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?’ Jesus answered, ‘Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.’” Was it fair for that man to be born blind? No, not really. Sight seems like a right given to all of God’s children, so why not he? But whether it was fair or not wasn’t really the question, not according to Jesus. All that mattered was, for some reason, God allowed it to happen. I didn’t feel it very fair that we were robbed without warning, but for some reason, God allowed it to happen. As our assailant sped off with a long stride, Elder James and I watched him, before turning to each other with heavily breathed laughs, communicating to one another 7 DIRECTIONS 69 wordlessly: Did that actually just happen? We knelt down to pick up our fallen snacks and walked outside the gated community to throw them away. We then made our way to an internet café to purchase minutos—public phone use. Elder James dialed the number as I dictated it to him; we always kept the mission office number on hand for emergencies. After explaining to them what happened, they were able to deactivate the sim card remotely. We went on like that, using minutos whenever we needed to make a call for a few weeks until a new phone came. Had that man taken my life, I could’ve become aware of some other direction, like the colors that only shrimp can see. Plato’s idea of the realm of being. I could’ve left the world outside of my cave, and come to understand an object, an existence, more real than my shadows. But it wasn’t my time. Ultimately, I hope our robber got exactly what he needed from our phone. 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 70 THE COLORS ONLY SHRIMP SEE In front of me stands a stranger, gripping my companion’s shoulder and holding a knife to his chest. Elder James rightfully gasps. Just a moment ago he was behind us. I thought he might be someone interested in learning about the Gospel. As missionaries, people would holler at us every now and again, if only for the purpose of learning what a couple of gringos were doing in Colombia. It really lifted my spirits for a moment— having someone call out to us—since we were in a real rut that afternoon. We had to grab a couple of snacks just to find the energy to keep going that afternoon. But now my companion’s snacks are on the ground, and I’m left frozen as one of Medusa’s victims to observe the 12-inch jagged meat-cutting knife whose tip lay at the chasm between Elder James’ ribs. My breathing accelerates. I feel my shirt rising and falling against my chest, that fluctuation becoming ever more rapid the longer I’m left to observe the scene. It’s surely only been seconds, but it feels like hours, days, as I can only anticipate the assailant driving the knife through Elder James’ shirt and chest, and then perhaps mine. Elder James wears his white button-up shirt just like man, and each of us has our nametag over the pocket, though mine says, Elder Wardell. When the Colombians read our names in tandem, realizing they both said Elder, we would joke, “You see, you have to buy names in the U.S., and ‘Elder’ is the cheapest one.” We would then go on to explain it’s just a title the missionaries use—connected to the priesthood in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. That was the other thing it said on our nametags—our title, and the Church’s name, with Christ’s name being nice and prominent. And though I’d heard many a story of the missionaries being held at knifepoint, right now, I have a hard 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 71 time coming to grips with why Christ would allow His servants to be put in such deliberate danger. “El teléfono,” he demands my companion. The robber wears a gray shirt under red checkered flannel, and ripped jeans. He has a flat top, and his sides are buzzed. He has light skin and clear eyes, like many Colombians. It’s something a lot of people don’t realize about Colombia—just how many of its citizens look like me. Yet the natives always know to identify me as the gringo before I even open my mouth. “El teléfono!” The assailant repeats. Elder James scrambles to remove the phone from his pocket. Elder James was a tall man, 6’4”, with curly blonde hair, much brighter than mine. If we both had darker hair and shorter frames, the robber might’ve paid us no mind to begin with. But alas, we’re here and now for a reason, or so they say. Behind us is the sidewalk we took to get here, a sidewalk that leads to one of the sketchier parts of our area—El Amparo. Everyone knew that El Amparo was in need of some structural aid. Elder James and I actually went down weekly to volunteer at the soup kitchen there. No motives of preaching, just pure service. Not that I mean to serve with the hope of a reward, but if the thanks I get are being stabbed then I might like to try negotiating at least. We saw effort after effort to try and help the people living in El Amparo. There was the soup kitchen, outreach programs for those in school, and plans for a park with a manufactured lake whose empty pit we walked past long after the projected date of completion. I wish I could’ve done more. We were probably followed from El Amparo to here—the safest part of our area. Probably tailed after discretely trying to use the phone. Not discretely enough obviously. And in the tail-end of my mind, a thought tries to push its way to the forefront as Elder 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 72 James faces the blade’s metal. A story my dad told me more than once. In the Church, we receive patriarchal blessings by the laying on of hands. Patriarchal blessings are prophecies of sorts—promises that come to pass, assuming one is faithful. My dad was a missionary in Argentina. He was Elder Wardell before me. On his mission, he too was walking in a general neighborhood, a place that seemed as safe as any, when suddenly, someone was standing in front of him with a gun. My dad was obviously scared out of his wits, probably even more so than I am right now. But he knew he wouldn’t die. The Holy Ghost brought comfort to his mind and heart, reminding him of the promise in his patriarchal blessing that he would one day have children. As this story tries to penetrate my consciousness, I have to wonder where my reassurances could be. To my left are the houses, all of them squares with metal doors, likely multiple floors. The Colombians packed together tight. They really made the most out of their square footage. It was actually quite utilitarian. Make the houses small, and everyone has an easier time finding a place to live, even the Venezuelan immigrants, who sometimes came with little more than the clothes on their backs. This being a nicer part of our proselyting area, the houses have more breathing room between each other. In areas like El Amparo, living spaces were stacked close together and one on top of the other, and it doesn’t take a genius to see why. I once asked one of my Ecuadorian companions if Ecuador was very different from Colombia. He said, “No. But the houses here are crazy. Not even in Ecuador is there so little space between the buildings.” I briefly see my reflection in one of the home windows. I don’t know what I’m doing trying to look at myself. Maybe shielding my vision from what might become of my companion. Perhaps hoping and praying for some savior to barge his way outside and 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 73 remove the obstacle from our path. I can’t see through the window. There’s grass in front of some of these houses. Seeing grass is rare in Bogota. It was more common in the less metropolitan parts of Colombia. It was one of the few things that reminded me of home, growing up in the sequestered little suburbs after all. My old neighborhood back in Utah was the real amparo. Amparo doesn’t have a direct translation, but it basically means protection, shelter, sanctuary, things that I certainly don’t feel at the moment. It’s really quite funny. I assured everyone in my emails home that Colombia was much safer than everyone presumed it was. I thought differently of the people here; I thought their portrayal in North American media was ludicrous after meeting them for myself. But now I’m not sure what to feel besides scared. I can’t help but think that maybe I should’ve never come out here. Turning my head back to the present, the knife turns to me, and now it’s my turn to drop all my belongings as I unpetrify myself. “Y el tuyo!” he asks for my cellphone too, but Elder James and I only have the one phone between the two of us. I can only imagine how he’ll react when I try to tell him that. My eyes dart for a moment to the right. On the other side of the street, there are Colombians who are going about their business. There’s a girl. She has a pink backpack; it looks like she’s coming home from school. It’s that time of day, isn’t it? The hours kind of slip between studying for three hours, having a big lunch, and proselyting the rest of the day. I haven’t gone to school in over a year, I’m barely 20. I remember being so utterly excited to leave school and go on a mission. I thought the days would be less monotonous out here. Maybe I should thank this knife-wielder for spicing things up a bit. A woman carries a grocery bag down the opposite sidewalk. It’s one of those big yellow 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 74 plastic bags from Éxito, the chain grocery store whose name means Success in English. A man crosses paths with her. He’s wearing a blue shirt and work boots, though I can’t tell if he’s coming or going from work. I can hear faint music coming from one of the shops, and more music from another shop further down. Some people had to run little convenience stores out of their homes, setting up counters in their wide doorways, and speakers to let passersby know they were open for business. As I look into one of those shops, the woman running the counter looks up, realizing what’s going on. She perks up—stands up a little straighter—and I think perhaps my savior has arrived. But even if she could intervene, she won’t make it in time, because I fear that if I delay any longer, I may very well confront the light. They say your life flashes before your eyes when you think you’re about to die, but I don’t think that’s true. Mostly it’s just a crisis of faith. Sure, a good deal of reflection on what came before, but mostly the wonder and fear of what comes next. Below me, I feel the rubber soles of my shoes, shoes designed for walking while still maintaining the appearance of dress shoes. My mom bought them for me. Below the soles is the pavement, whereupon lay my half-opened Book of Mormon lined with clear adhesive, specifically for moments like these. Well, not exactly moments like these, but moments when the book would hit the floor. The adhesive kept it from getting scuffed up. A few loose papers fell out of it—some papers with study notes, Spanish vocabulary, and personal reminders. I see one paper with a daily inventory reminder: “Qué hice bien hoy? Qué aprendí de mi compañero? Qué aprendí por medio del espíritu?” What did I do well today? What did I learn from my companion? What did I learn by way of the Spirit? Also having fallen out of the book, there’s a small sheet of Pokémon stickers. My brother 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 75 sent them. I’d smile if circumstances were different. There’s another paper I can see as well. It’s a little checklist my mom sent. “Read your scriptures. Write home. Take your vitamins. Beware of dogs.” That last one hits home. I remember being bitten by a dog in a previous area. I remember how distinctly the Spirit warned me it was about to happen, but I was grumpy, and I ignored the prompting to waste my energy being mad, and I let the dog sink its teeth not too deeply into my calf. The checklist goes on: “Obey the rules. Get along. Tuck in your shirt. Don’t slouch. Smile. Say your prayers.” I feel like I’ve done all of this. The checklist ends with: “Goodnight. We love you!” If I die, at least it would be with my Book of Mormon, and a message from my family. But on the grass, there’s something a little goofier. The Cheetos I was just eating. Well, not Cheetos, but the Colombian equivalent. And not even the really good Colombian equivalent, but the cheap, generic brand version. I could read the headlines now: “Mormon Missionary Found Dead Atop Cheese Snack.” In fairness, that is probably an article that I would read. Are my eyes watering up? I can hardly tell at this point; I feel so out of control of my body. Above me rests the sky. Bogota is pretty consistently cloudy. It’s chilly up on the mountain, and rain is ever a possibility. But rain or not, cloud or sunshine, we were always proselyting. I miss the areas I used to be in. Neiva, Ibagué, the hot lands as they were called. Neiva was a literal desert where the sun would shine unforgivingly till 7 p.m. at the earliest. Ibagué, the city of music, was slightly more metropolitan, but just as humid and bright down the mountains. It rarely rained in these cities, and when it did, the sun still managed to penetrate through the layer of cumulus. Bogota was just gray, and today is no exception. But they weren’t storm clouds. Just the typical bland variety that 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 76 passed through. Clouds with no rain; it’s a bit like a TV show that ends on a cliffhanger. All that bogging down tension with no resolution. I hear a plane soaring by up above. We were near the Bogota airport, so the engine sounds occurred with high frequency. I couldn’t hear a plane without thinking of the travel to the country. I left my family standing there in the airport while I got into the security line. I kept looking back at them until they eventually disappeared beneath the sea of heads. I had to tell myself over and over in my mind not to cry. I would’ve been mortified crying in front of a bunch of strangers in the airport line. It felt embarrassing enough looking back to wave to my family over and over again. But I kept doing it. Now when I hear the planes, it’s a reminder of the fact that I’ll be going home in less than a year. Or at least, that was the plan. This robber might escalate my departure date. Some people say that heaven is above. There are layers to heaven. Immediately after we die, our spirit leaves our body and goes to the spirit world. Some prophets have posited that the spirit world is around us here on the earth—that our ancestors walk about among us in their spirit bodies. Some of them are in a state of paradise. They followed Jesus Christ while on earth or accepted Him after learning about Him in the spirit world. Some are in a state of prison. They feel trapped and tormented by the sins they committed while on earth and are working past the guilt to accept the Savior. The ancestors in the spirit world are said to look out for us, especially as we perform baptisms and other ordinances on their behalf in the temple. One day, after all are resurrected, the repentant will go to the Celestial Kingdom, which very well may be above us, I’m not sure. The point is, I might be returning home sooner than I thought I’d be. 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 77 Inside of me, my heart is still beating a million miles a minute as it fears it might soon make contact with sharp, cold metal. My stomach feels concave, like it’s shrinking, or perhaps pushing up to try and get my heart out of the way of the oncoming knife. My brain pounds in my head, alarm bells going off, neurons panicking as they try to evacuate through the emergency exits, piling up and getting stuck between each other. My brain is so preoccupied in fact that no part of me stops to ask just why my heart is beating so fast in the first place. Once that thought occurs, finally, my body slows down to catch up with the way my mind is interpreting time at the moment. Amidst the slow motion, I can finally think why I feel so afraid right now. I’ve been a diligent servant of Christ, so I should be okay in the afterlife. Even if I have more repenting to do, I should still be fine in the afterlife. So, death in and of itself isn’t what’s scaring me. The thought that my future is being pulled out from under me? That I’ll never get to see college nor a job or a published novel in my name? Perhaps. But I still feel so fulfilled inside in terms of my material accomplishments; to be a servant of the Lord is fulfilling enough in its own right. Is it that I won’t see Amanda again? My family again? But I will see them again. It might be agony to wait for them in the afterlife, but I could do it if worse comes to worst. My heart beats like a metronome, no, like a clock, a stopwatch. The rhythm of the blood pumping is like a stopwatch, and if I don’t figure out why an untimely death is such a fear, I won’t win the prize waiting for me on the other side. Maybe that’s it—the other side. What if there is nothing on the other side? What if I’m exerting all this work for a hoax? Working… I’m a missionary, I work every day on my feet and in the homes of strangers to try and bring them the one thing that never fails to make me happy. My heart clicks. 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 78 That’s what I’m afraid of. That my work’s not done here. No, beyond that, not that my work isn’t done in Colombia, but that Colombia’s work isn’t done on me. Too often, I considered what I had to give to the Colombian people without thinking of what they had for me. Even just now, I imagined that if we could simply share our message with this robber, he’d give up his ways, but he’s an agent, not an object. He has a life. He needs our phone for something. He doesn’t want to kill me; he just really needs the money. Even he has something to teach me. My mind flickers back to those in El Amparo who slid their way so seamlessly into my heart. There’s Rodrigo who loves it when we come over and play hymns for him. He lives with his sister Emilsa who made us tamales Tolimensas, and we gladly ate them, even though they were still a little frozen. Her own son is serving a mission in El Salvador. There’s the familia Marin who came here from Venezuela, and they’re always so enthusiastic to see us, and to come to church with huge smiles on their faces. There’s Keiro, his wife Nicolasa, and every member of their family, who even got me a birthday cake the Sunday after my 20th, the Sunday after I’d broken my front teeth. And they didn’t even know I’d broken my teeth; they just got me the cake because they knew it was my birthday. They took that compassion on me while I was so far away from home. And now, confronted with a knife, I’m too absorbed in what I did to deserve death rather than what new experience death has in store for me. “Él no tiene!” Elder James says, waking me from my stupor, trying to convince the robber correctly that I have no phone. I’m finally able to spit out a few words. “Cierto, no tengo,” I say in agreement with my companion. The robber swings the knife. He swings it down to his side. With his other hand, now holding the phone, he uses the back of his hand to pad down my pockets, 7 DIRECTIONS REVISION 79 and once he’s satisfied that no phone could be there, he walks away with long, quick strides. Elder James and I look to each other, stunned for a moment, but then we both begin laughing. Yes, that really just happened, and yes, we’re both fine. We each get on one knee, picking up our books and our snacks, not wanting to litter, of course. The next mission is to find an internet café where we can buy minutos to call the main office and put in a request for a new phone. As we walk, I can’t help but think how closely we brushed with death. We talk about it briefly, but not very seriously. I wonder what it would be like to see the spirit world the way my ancestors see it now. To see some direction, some reality, that’s currently invisible to me. The naked eye is only so strong. We as human beings can only process three channels of color, red, green, and blue. The light spectrum is accessible to us only so far in both directions. Meanwhile, mantis shrimp see through 12 channels of color and can detect UV and polarized light. Here I am, jealous of invertebrates that have all those colors, but not a canvas to illustrate them. But one day, my eyes will be heightened too, and perhaps I might behold the colors only shrimp see. SPRING BREAK 80 JAMMED Just a day before the trip, I opened a fortune cookie, dispensing a prophesizing paper which read: YOU WILL FIND GOOD FORTUNE IN LOVE. The helicopter soared back and forth in the sky just about X miles ahead of us as we were stuck in a lineup of cars on I-15 South, about 45 minutes from Las Vegas. Ben turned his keys to stop his engine from running while I sat in his passenger seat, looking down at my phone, contemplating a text from my peer, Abi: Hey, would you be interested in going to dinner before Preservice on Thursday? and contemplating how I could tell her no. We were in it for the long-haul. Traffic jammed. The road was a dark gray, divided into two lanes with freshly painted yellow lines on either side. To the left of us, the road dipped, becoming black gravel and eventually a tan dirt median, with army green shrubs popping up, and the less frequent khaki-colored twigs and grasses that jutted out from the dirt. Such quote unquote ‘greenery’ mostly grew toward the edges of the median. Past the divide was another black road whose lane lines were just as sleek. A green sign stood past that road--“Exit 84 Byron ½ Mile”— and past that sign was desert, splotched with these untumbling weeds like a giant Jackson Pollock beat his brush full of seeds onto the open dirt land. Beyond the desert were the mountains, folding into each other wine red and olive green. As we sat looking at this expanse to our left, a large jeep 5 cars ahead of us turned his wheels sharply and drove hastily through the median, his tires kicking up brown clouds behind him as he illegally SPRING BREAK 81 U-turned his way onto the North Road, giving up hope that this stop would end anytime soon. To our right, a tall, white semitruck. At its end, the words “XTRA L E A S I N G” Beyond the truck was more desert, and looking past that, more mountains, with an unusually placed chain link fence that extended further into the south, following the road we were stuck on. My eyes followed the fence to a large field of metal that clashed with the desert buds. “What’s all that about?” I asked Ben. He turned to see what I was referring to. He had been to Vegas quite a few times and was typically knowledgeable about all matters related to engineering. He pushed his long red hair out of his face. He had a real Beethoven thing going on at the time, fitting for his musical ability. “That’s a solar thermal farm,” he said, as if I was supposed to know what that was. Granted, I suppose the name was pretty self-explanatory. Before I had the opportunity to sound like an idiot, he explained, “Those are mirrors.” He pointed to the miles of metal sheets that were all angled in one direction. “They direct sunlight at those tall things, boiling the water inside of them.” 170,000 mirrors in total, all pointing at three massive towers to produce solar energy. 377 net megawatts of solar power. With all of that light focused on those boilers, they looked like giant lightbulbs, even shining brightly despite the white Nevada sun. The reflected rays turn the water in the boilers into steam, and all that pressure cooking runs turbines within to create power. Ben and I planned this excursion to Las Vegas for months. The very first thing that bound us as friends was our mutual love for that great poet of the Bronx, William Martin Joel. SPRING BREAK 82 Getting up there in years and not living the healthiest of lifestyles, Ben was afraid Billy Joel might kick the bucket soon and wanted to see him perform live at least one last time. He picked me up the day before, and we rode down to Cedar City to spend the night. Our drive was spent listening to one of Joel’s concept albums, a short story by Ray Bradbury, talking Marvel and the upcoming “The Batman” movie, and exchanging terrible jokes, mostly along the lines of “Cedar? I hardly know her.” The Super 8 we arrived at that evening held a great deal of ambience and memory. My girlfriend, Amanda (or Manna as I called her), had received her endowments, a religious covenant, in the Cedar City temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She’d been serving a religious mission for nearly 6 months now, and admittedly, I was very lonely without her. The Super 8 was exactly where I stayed when I attended Amanda’s temple ceremony. The orange lights painted the exterior, with 3 rows of windows in 5 columns leading to the entrance, the yellow sign glowing as a lighthouse above. Super 8? I hardly know her 8. The next morning, we left the hotel to head off to our concert destination. Goodbye Super 8, goodbye Cedar, goodbye Manna’s memory. As we kept driving along, an ironic snow covered the desert in a flurried rug. The mountains too had their folds hidden by the splotches of snow on their faces. As Utah became Nevada, snow became dust. Ocean skies turned lighter, dyed by the rising morning desert sun. Ben told me of a new belle he had been seeing, a real Uptown Girl; I was happy for him, immensely so, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little jealous too. To add insult to injury, her name was Kayla, the same name as a dear ex- SPRING BREAK 83 girlfriend of mine. How someone needed me too. That hasn’t happened For the Longest Time. 9:38 a.m. That’s when I got the text from Abi asking me to dinner before our seminary training that week. I immediately knew what my answer would be but was far from ready to say it. As lonely as I felt, I saw Abi as only a friend, and I thought I had made that clear to her. It saddened me—the thought that I might’ve been leading her on—and what saddened me even more was having to potentially hurt her feelings in declining her invitation. It was so brave of her to even ask, and such bravery should have been rewarded, but if I chose to reward her, it wouldn’t have been real, and that would have been worse than honesty. Honesty. Such a Lonely Word. Our thoughts were interrupted as we noticed a long line of trucks in our right lane. Ben slid over to the left lane before I could even suggest he do so, but to the side of the trucks was another line of cars. We soon came to the end of it, expecting to move along soon enough, but no movement occurred. 10:06 a.m. Shortly after our friend in the jeep turned himself around, we realized we probably wouldn’t be moving any time soon. Ben dialed his mom to see if she could find out what was going on, stepping out of the car in the process. I sat staring at my phone for a moment longer. Looking on Abi’s text, I felt like someone was holding a mirror up to me. I was feeling the heat, and some kind of pressure was indeed boiling inside me. And I cannot handle Pressure. I stepped out of the car too to get more available air. Ben’s mother on speaker phone said, “It says here the highway is closed in both directions due to ‘police activity.’” Indeed, looking upon it more closely, the helicopter off in the distance was a police SPRING BREAK 84 helicopter. What kind of police activity would require a full stop on both sides like this? Immediately we started bouncing ideas off of each other. “Aliens,” was my immediate thought. The Mohave Desert was a hotbed for extraterrestrial activity after all. “If it were aliens, wouldn’t they send the military?” Ben reasoned. But thinking it over quickly, he re-reasoned, “Or maybe they’d want us to think it was the police!” Just about everyone else had stepped out of their car at this point. A man from the car behind us approached, asking if we knew what was going on; we told him everything we’d been told. He clarified, “So, no sign of when we’ll be past this.” We shook our heads in agreement. But Ben, lighthearted as ever, responded, “Frankly, I’m just wondering how far away I have to walk to take a leak before somebody tries to take my picture.” Sitting back in the car, still waiting the for the police to wrap up their activity, I turned my head to Ben, and asked, “How do you tell somebody you don’t want to go out with them?” “That was kind of unexpected,” he responded. I explained, “As you know, I’m a student teacher for seminary,” he said a quick yeah in response, “and I’m in a group with all the other student teachers; there’s a girl in there, uh, and I’m pretty sure she’s into me, like, I hope that doesn’t sound arrogant or whatever, but she asked me if I wanted to have dinner before our next meeting on Thursday. But I’m not interested in her.” SPRING BREAK 85 “Are you not interested in her because of Amanda or…?” “I wouldn’t be interested either way,” I responded, “Maybe that’s rude, but…” “No, you just don’t like that girl. There’s not anything wrong with that per se.” “Thank you.” A brief silence. “So, she did ask you to dinner?” I responded with a yeah. “Does she know about Amanda?” “I’m pretty sure she knew—err, I thought she knew that I… ‘had a missionary’” as we sometimes say in the Church. “When did she text you?” I told him the time. “Oh, today?” he responded a little surprised. I read him the text verbatim. “I don’t know,” he said. “I might just text her: ‘I think you’re really nice, but I’m seeing somebody.’ Yeah.” Another brief moment of silence. I felt quite stuck no matter how I responded to her. If I told her I was seeing someone, she might fire back with ‘Oh, I wasn’t asking you out or anything,’ because she didn’t explicitly say that after all in the text. Then I’d look like a real jerk. Ben spoke up again. “I was thinking about this recently actually. And… I don’t know how I feel about excuses, like… if they tell me they’re seeing somebody already, then sure, that’s fine. I’m just wondering how I’d feel if they said, ‘I’m not really interested.’ If they were just straight up, ya know?” “Uh-huh.” I had never thought about that before. I don’t think I’d ever had a girl tell me blatantly that they weren’t interested in me. Had I ever been so honest with someone else? “I just feel like it’s a total net-loss situation. No matter how I decline, I have to see her every week.” Ben chuckled at my saying so. “But I don’t want to lead her on.” There was another brief pause. SPRING BREAK 86 “You’re just crawling with women, you know that?” Ben joked. He was kind to me. I knew that the longer I took to respond to Abi, the more worried she’d be. That’s how I’d feel in her position. I also knew the more I put it off, the worse my trip would be. It would just keep eating away at me from the inside. I was in a real New York State of Mind. I had to just Tell Her About It. I knew what to respond, but I didn’t know how to write it. I’m a chronic people-pleaser. To a fault. A bit of a pushover in fact. I hated the idea of hurting anyone’s feelings, and, ironically, in the past, I hurt a lot of feelings by trying to please everyone. My thumbs trembled just slightly as I typed out a response: I appreciate the gesture Abi, but I’m not really looking to date right now; just waiting for my girlfriend on her mission and wavered over the send button for a moment. I let out a sigh and lowered my thumb to send the text off. It’s better this way. Now I can just focus on the vacation—focus on the concert— the thing that I had gotten all my homework done early to do. But I didn’t feel any better. I thought about Abi, and how kind she’d been to me. I often chose to sit next to her at our trainings because we did have a great deal in common. We, of course, had the same job teaching seminary, we were the same age, had both served a mission, I was an English Teaching major and so was she before she switched. Incidentally, she switched to be a History Education major, which is what Amanda was majoring in before she left for her mission. SPRING BREAK 87 I remembered the week that I was sick and couldn’t make it to my seminary class. I texted every student teacher to see if any of them could sub for me, and Abi so graciously offered to. In hindsight, I wonder if that was the case because she wanted me to like her. After subbing for me, she texted me much more often. I scrolled up through those text after I sent her my notice of rejection: Hey Jonah! How are you feeling? Been praying for you and hope you have gotten better. That was two days after she had subbed for me. I figured she was just being friendly. There was a split second where I thought she might’ve been treating me as more than a friend, but I shirked the thought quickly, supposing I was flattering myself too much as I was prone to do in the past. She just kept asking questions, and I wanted to be polite, so I kept answering them. But I can see how I may have given her the wrong idea. As we sat, the traffic still unmoving, I told Ben, “I don’t attract the women I’m attracted to. I’m always asked out by those who I wouldn’t ask out myself.” Ben was surprised by my saying anything since we had just been sitting in silence. It was mostly unprompted. He thoughtfully replied, “Well, maybe if you gave the chance to the girls you wanted to ask you out.” “What do you mean?” I asked confused. “Well, you’re always asking them out, because you’re interested in them. Maybe you should give them the chance to make the first move.” Maybe there was some truth in SPRING BREAK 88 that. But not completely. I felt I had given the chance to the apples of my eye multiple times to make the first move. Manna made the first move. Well, she’d disagree if you asked her, but I maintain that she did. She invited me to her house. We had been texting. She said, My brother is projecting Star Wars in our backyard tonight. You should come! That, to me, was most definitely the first move. It wasn’t a date or anything, but it would be our first occasion spending time together outside of a school function. I was hesitant to go. I didn’t want to lead her on if she was into me. I was still sorting out my feelings for her. I was a jerk. I still am a jerk in a lot of ways. I often wonder if I even deserve her. I remember one night, our choir group was all together. We were playing a game called Paranoia; a question is asked to you in secret, but you say the answer out loud. A coin is flipped, and if it lands tails, the question is revealed. Somebody asked me a question. “Amanda,” I answered, sitting just a few seats away from her. Flip. Tails. The question comes out: “Who’s the worst kisser you’ve ever kissed?” I defended my answer by saying I had only kissed one other person, so it wasn’t a fair comparison. She didn’t seem bothered by it, but that’s because I was a teenage idiot who couldn’t read women more than he could read Hebrew. I did end up going to watch Star Wars, and I don’t regret it one bit. I wonder if she does? I have no doubt Manna loves me. But I can’t help but feel that I don’t deserve her, with all the times I’ve hurt her. I snapped back to reality with the sound of a text message. It was Abi. Okay! No worries. SPRING BREAK 89 And So It Goes. But there were worries. I thought responding would put some pressure off of me, but I felt worse than ever. I didn’t respond to that message. What could I have possibly said anyway? I looked at myself in Ben’s right side view mirror. Thinking of all the times I hurt Amanda, and all the women I hurt before her too, maybe, in reality, I was sparing Abi by not letting her get near me romantically. Deep down, I’m still that same teenage idiot. Sometimes, I even fear I’m just a complete sociopath, or narcissist, despite how much I hate myself. I couldn’t think about it for long, though, because we started moving again. Oh, we started moving again. I didn’t realize we would so soon. It had only been 9 minutes since the stop. All that in just 9 minutes? The cars ahead of us went one by one until it was our turn, buckling ourselves back up, Ben putting his sunglasses back on, taking us off on our merry way. We quickly passed the solar farm and looked to our left. On the side of the Northbound road, there were at least 10 police cars lined up, with what appeared to be one pedestrian car in between the 10 of them, though that too could have been an undercover cop car. In the dirt median, there were at least 5 other police cars. We were tempted to pull over and ask them what was going on, but we didn’t have the guts. We made it to the concert that night, and though Billy Joel was about a mile away from us physically, the music reached me very up-close and personal. Singing Piano Man a capella with a stadium full of people like me, I couldn’t help but feel a great deal of pressure boiling inside my stomach. SPRING BREAK 90 Weeks after the fact, Ben and I kept looking up what could have possibly caused the ‘police activity,’ but no matter how hard we searched, there was never any explanation available for us. We would just have to die in ignorance I suppose. As Ben and I prepared for our LOTR marathon, I decided to pick up some Panda Express. It was a pleasant surprise to find the fortune cookie at the bottom of the bag (I always forget about it). I ate the cookie and unraveled the fortune between my fingers: YOUR BEST INVESTMENT IS IN YOURSELF SPRING BREAK REVISION 91 JAMMED 10:06 Ben held his mother on speaker while I sat in the passenger seat next to him, my feet up on the dash, his mother explaining, “It says the road is closed in both directions due to ‘police activity.’” Ben and I stepped out of the car to see the other freeway travelers ahead and behind us doing the same. Indeed, as we looked about 2 miles in the distance, the helicopter flying from side to side was a police helicopter. What kind of police activity would cause a prolonged freeway stop in both directions? Ben and I immediately began bouncing ideas off of each other: “Aliens,” I said. We were just 45 minutes outside of Las Vegas. A desert like that’s gotta be a hot bed for alien activity. “If it were aliens, wouldn’t they send the military?” Ben opposed. “If it were aliens, wouldn’t they want us to think that they weren’t?” “Nah, I’m going with zombies.” With a few chuckles, and observing other passengers walk around and stretch out, we bounced a few more likely ideas off of one another. “Maybe it’s an FBI most wanted type situation,” Ben opined. That seemed plausible. “I was thinking maybe an amber alert?” yet no such alert had come to either of our phones, and if it had come to some other traveler, they didn’t mention it. But despite the strangeness of the whole situation, my mind was elsewhere. I looked down at my phone again, reading a text from Abi: “Hey, would you be interested in going to dinner before preservice on Thursday?” and contemplating how I could tell SPRING BREAK REVISION 92 her no. I looked at the large white semitruck to the right of us, the white pickup truck in front, the small station wagon behind, and the dirt median that dipped to the left of us. Jammed. 10:07 The realization came soon enough that we would be stuck for a while. I thought about getting up and sitting on the car, but I didn’t want to expend the energy. However, with Ben’s car doors opened, I stood in the open doorframe, trying to get a better view of what was ahead, in reality trying to distract myself from Abi. Unfortunately for me, almost nothing was visible up ahead, and so I was stuck with the thought of Abi. I tried to look at my surroundings to keep the worry at bay. To our right was a big white semitruck, blocking the view from us entirely. To the left—the dirt median that separated the northbound road from us. The road across that dirt dip was just like ours, a plain black with what looked to be freshly painted lines separating two lanes. As I observed the road, a jeep 4 cars ahead of us made a U-turn, crossing the depressed median and making his way onto the North Road, driving away from us, literally leaving us in the dust. “Huh. How do you like that?” I asked Ben. “Guess he wasn’t in it for the long haul,” he responded. A passenger from the car two ahead of us chimed in: “Sure, easy enough for him, but for people like us with tiny cars? Forget about it.” I guess there are two kinds of people in this world. Those with tiny cars and those with jeeps. SPRING BREAK REVISION 93 Past the northbound road was a green sign held up by four metal poles—two to hold it straight up, and two to support it against the wind. The sign read, “Exit 84 Byron ½ Mile.” That sign would the last evidence of humanity for miles, as further East of the sign was pure alien territory. A khaki desert with sharp gray and muted green shrubs springing up every two feet from each other. Beyond the desert land were mountains, folding into each other in an indescribable combination of brown, green, and gray. 10:08 Despite the beauty of the desert to our side, I couldn’t bring myself to focus on it. As much as I tried not to, I could only think about Abi, and her proposal for dinner that I just didn’t feel right accepting. Admittedly, I felt very lonely since my girlfriend, Amanda, left to serve a mission for the Church that we were a part of. It was something I earnestly wanted her to do since I experienced the same thing myself, and something she wanted even more than me. I never would have held her back from it, but I missed her deeply, unsure of how I would go another 12 months without her. I suspected Abi might’ve been into me, but I always pushed the thought aside, just thinking that I was getting a big head. Abi and I were part of a group called “Preservice”—student teachers in the seminary of the Church of Jesus Christ of LatterDay Saints. I remember when I was sick in November 2021. I reached out to all the other student teachers to see if any of them could substitute for me, and Abi volunteered readily. I guess that was the first hint that she wanted to get closer to me. I told her how much I owed her one. I didn’t want to have to owe her one quite like this—not that I felt SPRING BREAK REVISION 94 obligated to. She was a sweet girl; I know she wouldn’t pressure me. After she subbed for me, she started texting me a little more frequently. For a moment, I suspected something again, but in my naivety, I kept the suspicions at bay as well as my ego. Mostly, she reached out just to get advice on lesson plans, and that seemed normal and reasonable to me. Sometimes, she would dip into more personal topics, like asking about my favorite poets. She knew I was an English major, which she had been before switching to History Education. Funnily enough, Manna (Amanda’s nickname) was a History Education major too. I swiped my thumb up from the bottom of my phone, exiting my messages and going to my email, wanting to revisit my last communications with Manna each week. 10:09 “I’m just wondering how far away I have to walk to take a leak without someone snapping a photo,” said Ben, breaking my trance from my phone. “Huh?” I said looking up at him. Looked like he had gotten off the call with his mom. His words finally registered to my brain which was playing catchup after being diluted by the white light of my screen. “Oh, yeah,” I chuckled at his joke. He never did go to take that leak. But that was partly my fault, because I asked him, “Hey, how would you want somebody to tell you no if you asked them out and they didn’t want to?” He was taken aback by the question. It did seemingly come from out of nowhere. I explained to him the situation, apologizing for not providing that context beforehand. I just had a lot on my mind. After mulling it over, Ben said, “Well, I think the best-case scenario would be that they’re just seeing another person. Then it means there’s nothing wrong with me.” That train of thought made sense. “You could tell her that you’ve got SPRING BREAK REVISION 95 Amanda.” I was overthinking the whole thing. Abi’s text hadn’t explicitly been a request to go on a date. If I told her Oh, I have a girlfriend¸ she could easily fire back with So? Two friends can’t get dinner? And sure, they can, but they don’t. Not these two friends. I explained to Ben, “The problem is, no matter how I tell this girl no, I’ll have to see her again every week at our trainings.” Ben nodded in understanding of the situation, but he had no response. After a brief silence, he said, “I was actually just thinking about this whole thing—if I got rejected. Would I want the person rejecting me to be completely honest about why they’re saying no?” I reflected on those words for a moment. Why was I saying no to Abi in the first place? I just didn’t like her in that way. Was I wrong for that? 10:10 Ben and I walked a short distance from the car, where we could finally see beyond the truck to our right. That’s when I noticed what looked like a huge array of solar panels, yet something was off about them. “What’s all that about?” I asked Ben. He had a certain know-how about these things, and indeed he answered, “Oh, that’s a solar farm. Those are mirrors. They all reflect the sunlight to that tower there.” He pointed to a tall spire with a big black container at its peak. “It holds water, so with the sunlight on it, the water boils. The steam creates pressure, and the pressure creates energy.” It was an impressive display. There must’ve been thousands of mirrors out there, all lined up and tilted perfectly toward the sun, like trees in an apple orchard, with a long chain-link fence to surround the farm. No doubt, the aliens must’ve loved it here. SPRING BREAK REVISION 96 Looking at the solar farm suddenly made me hyperaware of the sun that was beating down on us, as if someone were holding a mirror up to me, directing the sunrays straight to my body, boiling my blood and building up pressure all about me. I walked back to the car to reassume my seat on the passenger’s side while Ben kept walking about. We left both doors open to let the wind come and go between our seats. The wind was the only company I had for the time being. I pulled out my phone to find the emails that I had opened just two minutes ago, and there was one of my most recent conversations with Amanda. I hesitated to read it. It made me sad. I don’t know why Amanda even wanted me to wait for her to get home from her mission anyway. I felt like I was nothing but trouble for her. She never felt like she was good enough for me, which was ludicrous, because if anything, she was way out of my league. But as a result, she would always ask, “If you could change anything about me, what would it be?” I never indulged those questions, but she never stopped asking them. 10:11 I couldn’t keep my eyes away anymore. I had to read the emails. I miss you so much Jonah, I don’t think I can go one more year without you.--Manna I miss you so much too. But I know you can do it. Remember, you are stronk! [an inside joke between us] Is everything okay?--Jonah Jonah, do you really think we’ll end up together?--Manna I do. Don’t you think so?--Jonah I mean, I dunno.--Manna SPRING BREAK REVISION 97 Do you wanna talk about it?--Jonah It's just like, do you even still like me? And will you still like me a year from now? I feel like I'm not good enough for you.--Manna Why would you feel that way? That’s crazy. Of course I still like you. I don’t know why I wouldn’t like you a year from now.--Jonah Because like I'm not a good missionary, and like I feel so young and stupid and like you're an actual grown up and so much better than me --Manna Who said you weren’t a good missionary? I think you’re a great missionary. You’re not young and stupid. I feel like you’re more grown up than me in a lot of ways --Jonah If I’m being honest, I think I know why Amanda never thought she was good enough for me. I remember this differently, but if you ask her, the first time we broke up in high school, it was so I could be with another girl. Like I said, I don’t remember that, but she’s proved to me time and time again that her memory is better than mine. I must’ve made Manna feel like she was second place. I don’t understand why she would still want me after that. I count myself lucky. 10:12 But what woman deserves that kind of treatment? Is Manna even truly happy when she’s with me? How could she be after everything I did to her? Should my happiness come at the expense of hers? If I love her, wouldn’t the right thing to do be to end her suffering? SPRING BREAK REVISION 98 “You all right there buddy?” Ben took me out of my thoughts again. I looked up to see him leaning into the driver’s side window. I was unsure how to answer him. I wasn’t very all right. But I didn’t want to tell him that and ruin his vacation. We had been looking forward to this for months—the chance to go see Billy Joel in Las Vegas. “Yeah, everything’s all right,” I lied. Ben rather saved me from spiraling there. When I told him I was all right, he made his way, taking in the fresh air, stretching his legs. He didn’t like sitting quite as much as I did. But I couldn’t just spend the rest of this vacation staring at my phone. I’d have to nip this thing in the bud. I went back to my conversation with Abi to type out a reply. I came up with: “I appreciate the gesture Abi, but I’m not really looking to date right now, just waiting for my girlfriend on her mission.” My thumb hovered over the send button, reluctant to press it. That reply seemed more than serviceable. She would understand, right? I hated the idea of having to tell her no. Frankly, I hated telling anyone no. I’m a real pushover in that sense. My senior year of high school, I promised Manna that I would take her to the Olive Garden; she would die for the breadsticks there. I specifically remember asking for an Olive Garden gift card for Christmas so that I could take her. This was after we had broken up the first time. We remained friends because she pretended not to be hurt by my actions. Once again, I have no idea why she stuck around with me. 10:13 SPRING BREAK REVISION 99 Well, I delayed in asking her. She started dating around a bit, and so did I. I had a girlfriend nearing the end of that senior year. Yet, I didn’t forget my promise to take Manna to that old “Italian” restaurant. I ended up breaking things off with my girlfriend. There were a lot of factors at play in that. But one of the biggest was the fact that I still had feelings for Amanda. I did end up taking her to get those breadsticks, and we ended up kissing in the parking lot (real romantic venue, I know). The day before I left for my mission, I went to Amanda’s house. We stood in her entryway in front of her split staircase. I’m pretty positive her parents were listening in, but I could hardly care. It was hard to pull myself away from her. I kept telling myself I was going to leave, but every time I told myself so, my feet remained firmly planted. We hugged each other over and over again. We went on a date, we had kissed again, but we hadn’t labeled ourselves as anything. Despite all that, when I couldn’t force myself to stay any longer, I leaned in, and she let me kiss her. It just felt like the right thing to do, and I lamented, because in my mind, I figured it would be the last time I’d get to kiss her. “Goodbye Manna.” “Goodbye Jonah.” And I left. She kept the door open and watched me as I walked back to my car. A couple years later, she told me that she sat on her stairs and cried after I left. I sighed deeply once I was returned to the present once again. It was still 10:13, and yet my memories felt like they had taken up so much more time than that. My thumb was weighed down by Manna’s memory, and I pressed send on the message to Abi. SPRING BREAK REVISION 100 10:14 If anything, I was sparing Abi from my selfishness and foolishness and objectifying and using. Of course, she didn’t know that, and I worried about the blow it might’ve been to her. I thought that leaving the message unanswered would make my vacation unenjoyable—that it would loom over me the whole time and just stress me out. Turns out, responding wasn’t much better. Almost immediately, Abi fired back with: “Okay! No worries. ” But there were worries. She seemed content enough, but how else was she supposed to respond? I was worried about how she might’ve really felt. But maybe I was just getting a big head again, thinking that my rejection was some devastating, unhealable blow. If only she knew how much better off without me she would be. But I didn’t have much time to ponder on it. “They’re moving!” somebody a few cars ahead of us shouted. “They’re moving?” I quickly asked, popping out of the car to stand up and look to Ben. He looked back at me, then attempted to look ahead, but saw nothing at first. Though the epicenter of the delay was just about 3 miles away, it was almost invisible to us. Movement could’ve just been an illusion. But no. Only 9 minutes after we had been stopped in the first place, we were able to get going again. Everyone on the road quickly hopped back into their cars, and in just a few seconds, we all got going at a snail’s pace, rubbernecking at the cause of the stop. We saw upwards of 15 police cars, on the side of the Northbound Road, and in the median. Though tempted to pull over and ask what happened, we kept driving, leaving me in the dark on yet another thing that day. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 101 THE GREAT OWL “The Indians are very patient people. They like humor and they like stories. They like brotherhood/sisterhood…Everybody comes from one source, one creation,” so said my grandpa when interviewed for his Founders Day award beside my grandma. My mom’s stepdad, Daniel Edwards was a registered member of the Yurok Tribe in California. He often made his way down to the Salmon Festival each year, sponsored by his own tribe, where he engaged in trading and shopping, gifting us, his grandkids, incredible pieces of jewelry, each piece with a story attached to it. Like the arrowhead he gave me when I was 10, with its limestone eye, which he told me kept bad spirits away. I’ve worn the silver and limestone every day since then. My grandpa’s words were truer for no one than himself. He loved humor, and he loved stories. The following is one of my favorites, told from his own perspective. I waded through the rushing water carefully; it came up to my waist as I ventured about 10 feet off the bank to one of the large stones protruding from the river’s mud floor. The water was cold. I just had to pretend I was going through a meatgrinder, then I could forget about the temperature. As I made my way to the large rock, I strung my sack to it securely, the sack facing the rushing current, the knot on the other side. The sack hung just slightly above the water’s surface, but with the way the river crashed, water rocked into the bag, and poured out slowly through the tiny hole in the bottom. In the fall months when I was a boy, we had to pick up the acorns quickly. The deer and wild hogs liked them just as much as we did. What many people don’t realize is that acorns are edible. We would gather the acorns, bunch them all up, and mash them DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 102 with water, turning them into a paste. The paste itself was edible, but we mostly turned it into oatmeal, bread, or sometimes pancakes with enough water. The problem is, they taste too acidic straight off the tree, so they need to be washed. Most of our water bill went towards the washing machine, so we didn’t have the gallons necessary to wash off the acid from the acorns. Luckily the river cooperated with us, as long as we didn’t fight her current or any of her other established rules. We waded in, put the ironically acornshaped bag on the rocks, and waded out, knowing we’d be back for the clean, untouched acorns the next day. The river was just a short drive from home where I lived with my mom, dad, grandma, my sister, and my two brothers. After coming back on shore, my dad gave me a towel to dry off with. My siblings came back onto shore shortly after me, having attached their bags to other rocks. The river ran white due to its rapid motion. Its constant running created foam on the surface of the water, and so the true color of the river remained a mystery to us. I was surprised there were any rocks left to jut out of the river. Seems to me they all would’ve eroded away by now. The riverbanks were filled with trees of all shapes and sizes. The oak trees which bore the acorns were lamentably furthest away from the river. Thinner trees seemed to pervade the space closest to the water, usually hunching over, trying to get as close to the water as possible. Once we had all exited the water, my dad said, “Come on, let’s go get some eggs,” and we all smiled excitedly, running back to the car just about 10 feet away on the side of the road. We got our eggs from Earl who had his own chicken coups. His eggs were cheaper than the stores, and he was closer to us, so it was a real win-win. When we went to buy eggs, Earl would let us see the chickens, and sometimes pet and play with the DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 103 chicks. We climbed into the back of the station wagon, setting our towels down on the seats so that dad didn’t throw a fit when we got our wet clothes all over his car. Earl’s place really was crawling with chickens. They mostly knew to stay in the coups unless it was feeding time, but he had so many chickens that there would always be stragglers running around. When Earl led us to his backyard this time around, we noticed that one of his coups had been nearly destroyed. The metal roof had been peeled back like a can of tuna, and the inside didn’t look much better. We quickly started running over to assess the damage before our father said “Hey!” and we stopped dead in our tracks. “It’s all right John, let the kids be kids.” My father grumbled in agreement and so we ran over to the worse for ware coup. There was a bucket, rag, and sponge nearby. Early had been cleaning it up, but we saw some remnants of blood, and recoiled slightly, forgetting the bravery that compelled us to run here in the first place. I opened my ears carefully as I tried to hear what my dad said to Earl. “Was it that owl again?” my dad asked. Earl nodded, and said, “I thought the metal roofs would be enough, but that bird is persistent.” My dad lamented Earl’s case. The big owl had been terrorizing him for months now, but this was quite the turn of events. The big owl never got away with more than a single chicken, if that. Usually, it was just an egg or a chick. But this time, an entire coup had been ravaged. “So what are you going to do?” dad asked him. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 104 “Well, I’ve got no choice now.” I watched as my dad just nodded, but I had no idea what that meant. After that, they got down to business. My dad bought a few dozen eggs, enough to give the family breakfast for maybe a week, and with that we were on our merry way. We always wished we could’ve stayed longer at Earl’s place, but we honestly felt a little sick after that particular visit. Our house wasn’t too much to gawk at. Rather sequestered from the other houses nearby. That’s why we had to drive to go anywhere—the river, Earl’s house, the store, etc. But the house was more than enough for our family. One story with a basement, and in the basement, our washing machine. It was a pretty old machine. It didn’t turn on the way it used to. There used to be a switch; I still remember it. You’d put the clothes in, turn the switch, and boom, there goes the cycle. But the switch broke. Now, the only way to start the washing machine was to take a small wire, and connect it very carefully to a small piece of metal. My mom had the magic touch—she was the only one who could get it started like that. One day, when we were all playing in the basement, mom came in and set a load in the machine, bringing the wire over delicately, and in an instant, we heard the rumble of the water filling the metal. Mom took the empty clothes basket and headed back upstairs. “I bet I could stop the machine and start it back up again. Mom wouldn’t even know,” gloated my brother. I knew that definitely wouldn’t be the case, so I egged him on. “Do it,” I said plainly. And sure enough, with that little bit of encouragement, he walked over to the DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 105 machine, removed the wire from the metal, and quickly tried to place it back. The moment he pulled the wire away, the machine stopped all noise and movement, and despite his multiple efforts to replace it, it wouldn’t restart. We could hear my mom’s footsteps thumping down the stairs. My brother quickly stepped away from the machine, ensuring he was the farthest one from it. When mom reached the bottom of the stairs, she scowled at us, particularly my brother. She had a third eye for these kinds of things. She always knew who was really responsible. “Stop playing with the washing machine,” she chided, hands on her hips. She turned to the side, and readjusted the wire, starting up the machine again, as if by magic, then turned around to make her way back upstairs. Despite how angry she was, we weren’t awfully undeterred. Thing is, I saw how she did it this time. I knew I could get it to start myself, and boy wouldn’t that just put steam in my brother’s head. “My turn,” I said, approaching the machine with a smile and the confidence of, well, a child. The machine rumbled next to me as I put my hand out, fingertips pinching the wire. I removed it, let it sit for a moment, and then readjusted it, just like I saw mom do. But it didn’t start. I began to panic. I started adjusting the wire in all sorts of configurations, but nothing gave. I heard my siblings snickering at me before they were quieted by the sound of my mom coming down the stairs again. I didn’t budge. I thought maybe if I could get it to start then I’d assuage her anger. But I couldn’t get it to start. No dice. And so, my mom came down, her scowl even more penetrating than before. “That’s it,” she said, exasperated, patting my wrist away before turning the machine back on herself. That’s when she got behind us and ushered us up the stairs, then DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 106 out the backdoor, where grandma was rocking in her chair, doing needlework. “Your grandkids were playing with the washing machine again,” my mom said to grandma. Grandma nodded, and as if that were a cue, my mom closed the door, leaving us out on the back porch with grandma while the sun set. “You kids have been awful ornery lately,” said grandma. “I didn’t do anything, grandma,” my sister interjected. We rolled her eyes at her. “Shh,” my grandma commanded. “Do you know what we do with growing children who are ornery?” None of us responded, afraid to be shushed like my sister. “We leave them out on the porch all night.” We looked at each other with disbelief. Surely, she wasn’t serious. Mom, dad, grandma—not one of them would leave us outside all night, not when they knew that bigfoot was prowling around. The nearest house was about 5 miles. We could never make it there without bigfoot catching us. And if that weren’t bad enough, my grandma went on: “Have you kids heard of the Great Owl?” We assumed she was talking about the owl that had been swiping Earl’s chickens, so we nodded. “No, you haven’t,” our grandma corrected us after we nodded. “The Great Owl flies through the town in the night while the good children sleep. While the bad children are out on the porches, the Great Owl comes and snatches up the worst, most ornery of all the kids with his enormous claws. He grabs them and carries them down to the river, dropping them in the deep water, where they have to swim for the rest of their lives.” Now that I refused to believe. “Nuh-uh,” I said to grandma, and she shot me a look—not an angry look, but one that said, ‘pipe down.’ DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 107 “Quit going near the washing machine, and maybe we won’t put you out on the porch,” she said with a smile, as if she was having a laugh about this whole thing. That just confirmed that she had to have been joking. But none of us said anything in response, and we didn’t go back downstairs for the rest of the day. I was hesitant to step back into the water the next morning where we had to retrieve the acorns we placed there the day before. I was being ridiculous—grandma was being ridiculous. Obviously there was no Great Owl, and there were no kids that it had dropped into the river to swim for their lives, nor any corpses floating down the current, and certainly not any skeletons at the riverbed that I might step on when I traversed back out there… “Just pretend you’re going through that meatgrinder,” I said to myself, trying to ignore the temperature and any other ludicrous thought as I stepped into the river. I wanted to move quickly to get out of the water as fast as possible, and yet, my steps felt slower than ever. The mud of the river floor parted beneath my feet. I dragged my toes across the dirt, unwilling to lift a foot completely off the ground, paranoid that the river might sweep me away with the bad children grandma was talking about. The river current was pretty weak at this point in the landscape, that’s exactly why we put our acorns here specifically; easy to get in and out. But despite the feeble water current, I couldn’t help but feel like an acorn. If I were to fall out of my secure little bag, the river would sweep me away to lands unknown. Speaking of, just a few yards to my right, I could hear my brother groaning. I looked his way and saw that his bag had fallen partway into the water rather than hovering right above it. He picked it up and shook the water out through the bottom. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 108 I could tell how light it was when he held it up. Most of the acorns must’ve indeed spilled out. I couldn’t help but smirk, and luckily, I forgot about grandma’s stories for a moment. My brother looked over to see my smiling, which prompted him to say, “Oh go suck an acorn, Eugene.” He snidely emphasized my name, trying to get a rise out of me. See, dad once played a practical joke on me. He told me I needed to taste test the acorns after pulling them off the rock, so I put one in my mouth, only to spit it out of course. But, despite the way my brother was egging me on, he wasn’t going to get to me, because I still had a full bag of acorns. With my thoughts pulled away from the Great Owl, I was able to reach my rock and undo the tightly secured bag I had left there, taking the washed acorns at my side back to the riverbank. My father handed me a towel when I got back to shore, chastening my brother before handing him one as well. We all dried off and got back into the car, heading home. I felt better having seen no evidence of grandma’s little story. We came back home to put our bags on the counter. Mom snorted when my brother put his deflated bag down next to our full ones. She asked, “Why don’t you kids help me mash ‘em?” We weren’t particularly excited at the prospect. “And I’ll make pancakes tomorrow,” she added. That little addendum made us a little more willing, and we agreed to help. Of course, we knew that she would threaten ‘Whoever doesn’t help doesn’t get pancakes.’ Dad went out while we worked on the acorns, which was typical of him. Regardless, he would get pancakes anyway. We started by meticulously opening the acorns. The cup—the little brown top piece that looks like a hat—came off with little force, though some cups were kind of DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 109 prickly, so we’d use the pestle to just crack those ones open. Once the acorns were open, we removed the seeds from their insides. Sometimes, there would be two seeds in one acorn—a real jackpot. Once all of the cups and shells were in the garbage, and all of the seeds were laid out before us, we would crush the seeds down to a flour-like consistency. This was the least enjoyable part of the process. Mom did most of the crushing, she was much better than we were. We stored the mush for use tomorrow morning when mom would make pancakes. The mush was called wiiwish by most tribes. Another tribe called it shawii. But we called it chekcha. The chekcha was sustenance in all forms. Besides nourishing us literally as food, it was a sign of our hard work and togetherness. Mom wiped her hands clean and had us do the same. The day felt like it was winding down, and yet, it was still bright outside. I wondered what we might do with the rest of the day, till dad walked in and answered my qualm for me. “Earl caught the owl!” he said right upon entering. We all looked to him, my mother and grandmother included, and after glancing at him, I shot a look towards my grandma. She looked back at me, first with eyes that seemed heavy, then with a very subtle smile. “Do you kids want to come see it with me?” dad asked. How could we possibly say no? We piled into the car, all of us except grandma. We drove down the path to Earl’s house, river to the left of us, and I looked out the window the whole drive until it was out of sight. When we arrived at Earl’s house, we saw some other neighbors coming and going, no doubt wanting to see the beast that had been terrorizing our town like a demon or trickster god, toying with us mere mortals. Yet, Earl had caught it. Psh, some demon. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 110 We came through Earl’s house and to his backyard amidst the chicken coops, where a small crowd was huddled together. Earl turned his head to see us arrive and walked over, greeting us with a “Howdy.” “How’d you do it!” asked my sister excitedly. My mother tapped her arm for what she considered impoliteness on my sister’s fault. Earl just chuckled before responding. “I set up one of the coops with an open roof and a single chicken inside of it. When the owl flew inside, he tripped the roof, and it closed in on him. I found him in there the next morning. Looked like he had been flying against the walls all night.” “So, you had to sacrifice one of your chickens?” my brother asked shocked. Earl responded with a shrug, saying, “Well, you can’t make an omelet…” he didn’t finish the metaphor. Maybe the reference to eggs was a bit too on the nose. “Then the owl is still in the coop?” I asked. Earl hesitated, looking my parents in the eyes before looking back down at me. “Well no. I had to shoot it.” “Shoot it?” my sister asked in disbelief. Earl stepped to the side, inviting us to join the small crowd of spectators and see for ourselves. We made our way over quickly at first, but our footsteps became shorter and shorter the closer we got. We stood behind our neighbors, waiting for them to get their fix. They sidestepped in order for us to get a better view, and my siblings and I bent our knees and hunched down to get a good look. It was huge, and I mean seriously huge, much larger than I imagined it would be. There was no way owls could get bigger than this. Its wings were spread out like a cross. Though its wingspan was about 5 feet, I pictured it flying, DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 111 thinking its wings could span from one horizon to another. Its alternating black and white patterns made the beast look gray, a dark gray, and the small hole Earl left in its center had splattered red flecks all over its body, wings, and face. And its eyes, oh, those eyes. They were still open, as if it just refused to go to sleep. It was staring at us, all of us at the same time. Big, yellow…judgmental, scowling almost. Then there were the horns. Before this, I had only ever heard of owls with horns, never having seen one myself. I always thought the word “horns,” was an exaggeration, but no. Those were horns. As disturbed as I was by the sight, I simply could not look away. I heard a light smacking sound. I think it was my mom, chastening my dad for bringing us here to see this. At that, my father directed us all away, and that was just as well since there were people behind us who wanted to see too. Despite my parents guiding us away, the image was, and still is, burned into my brain. We sat with grandma on the back porch as the day wound down, the sun coming to a set. “Earl killed the Great Owl,” I told grandma, excited to stick it to her. “Oh?” she replied. It certainly wasn’t the reaction I hoped for nor expected. She seemed all together undisturbed by the fact. “Yes,” I replied, my voice a little louder, as if she hadn’t heard what I said. “How big was it?” she asked. “Big,” replied my sister. “What color was it?” grandma asked further. “Gray with yellow eyes,” said my brother. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 112 “How did Earl kill it?” grandma asked again. “He shot it, right in the center,” said my other brother, making a gun shape with his fingers. Grandma chuckled. I failed to find what was so amusing. “That wasn’t the Great Owl,” grandma said simply. “The Great Owl isn’t just ‘Big.’ The Great Owl is the dark in the nighttime, spread over all. His eyes are not yellow, they’re black. Pure pitch black, and when you look in them, you see all of your wrongs, even the ones you don’t know about. He cannot be killed by you or I or Earl, and certainly not with a gun. You thought that little thing that Earl shot was the Great Owl? Kids, you’ve got another thing comin’.” My grandma just laughed once she was done talking, rocking herself out of her chair to head back inside, still laughing, nearly cackling. Once again, I failed to find what was so amusing. “John,” said my mother, mixing the chekcha around in a bowl with water, making the consistency just right. “Will you go to the store and get some sugar? We don’t have enough.” Dad nodded and went to grab his keys. “Who’s coming with me?” he asked. We all readily stood up to join him, happy to get out of the house in the morning. Grandma stood up to join us too, saying she needed a couple things from the store. We went outside and got in the car, my grandma in the passenger seat and us kids crammed into the back like always. I made sure to sit on the very far left of the car, determined, on a mission. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT 113 As we drove past the river, I kept my eyes peeled, watching very, very carefully, attentive, ensuring I could make no possible mistake. Once the river was out of our sight, I turned away from the window, and straight towards grandma, and with total accusation, I said to her, “Grandma, I’ve seen the river three times since your story, and I haven’t seen any kids swimming in there. Just admit that there is no Great Owl.” Without turning, she said, “Did you see those rocks sticking out of the river?” I paused. Once again, grandma responded with anything but what I expected. But of course I saw the rocks, I saw them all the time—those same rocks we draped our acorn bags over. But before I could even respond to her, she said, “The orneriest of children? They stayed in the river so long, they turned to stone.” We never touched the washing machine again. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 114 THE GREAT OWL “The Indians are a very patient people. They like humor, and they like stories. They’re like a brotherhood, a sisterhood kind. It’s just a way of working with them as people—and they call themselves people, too—dynamic people. Everybody comes from one source, one creation.” My grandpa, Daniel Edwards, is from the Yurok tribe in California. The quote above is part of his acceptance video for the University of Utah’s Founders Day Award. He and his wife, my mom’s birth mother, have done a great deal of social work to break the revolving door of poverty for many Native American individuals and families. As an American Indian himself, my grandpa has always loved telling stories. What follows is one of my favorites from him, told from his perspective. I waded through the cool, soft-rushing water, making my way toward one of the large rocks breaching out of the river in a spire. Yes, the water was colder thanks to the fall weather, but I always told myself Just pretend you’re going through a meat grinder, then the water didn’t seem so bad. On the flip side, California falls really were beautiful, despite how much I may have been desensitized to them. The evergreens contrasted with the trees which became gradually more orange, and the grasses by the riverbanks which turned a soft blend of green to yellow, and all of this in front of the pale cliffs before a blue sky showcased the ideal American fall. Despite how cool and relaxing the California fall felt, there was much work to be done. It was this time of year when the acorns fell from the trees, and we had to be quick to snatch them from the ground before the deer and other animals might get to them. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 115 Not a lot of people know that you can eat acorns. We, of course, couldn’t eat the shells. The edible part came from the inside. But that too came with needed preparation. In the old days, they’d have to grind the acorn seeds with a pestle and mortar until they had the consistency of flour. Nowadays, we mostly use a coffee grinder, but sometimes we get more creative if mom needs to keep us busy with something. Once the seeds are all ground up, we put them in a basket, which coincidentally is shaped like an acorn. Even when ground up, acorns aren’t safe for consumption. They’re too acidic. They need to be washed thoroughly. Running water from the tap comes with a bill, but running water out here is free, so, we tie our acorn-shaped baskets around the rocks in the rivers, angling them just right to let the water wash over the mush and filter out through the tiny hole in the bottom of the basket. Give it a day and the mush is safe for consumption. The Kumeyaay call it wiiwish. That’s the name that most people know it by, assuming they know it at all. But we call it chekcha. Once it’s ready, it can take many forms. We’d eat it as oatmeal, mom would make bread out of it, or if we were really lucky, she’d make pancakes. I made my way back to the riverbank along with my siblings, Vern, Shirley, and Billy, who also placed their bags around rocks. On our way out, Vern scooped up some water and threw it over Shirley’s head. After screaming, she retaliated by knocking him off balance with a push, making him fall backwards into the water. She scurried out quickly before Vern could grab her, and Billy and I followed, laughing all the way. Upon reaching the bank, dad gave us each a towel and chided us for splashing each other, but he was hiding a smirk. “Cut it out,” he said. “Don’t get the towels wet.” He made sure we were as dry as possible before piling us back into the car. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 116 Driving down the dirt road, I watched the trees mesh in tans, browns, greens, and oranges as we sped along, feeling a little amused in those moments when we would slow down, and the blurs became something much more coherent. In those moments when I could see clearly, I challenged myself to see as far as possible through the bush. I thought to myself that if I could just look far enough, I would see all the secrets that the trees hid between themselves. But amidst all the changing vegetation, I quickly realized we weren’t on our way home. “Where are we going?” I asked. “I thought we’d go get some eggs from Tripp,” my dad said. We all perked up at that. Visiting Uncle Tripp was always, well, a trip. Getting eggs from him was cheaper than getting them from the supermarket, so we went by often for purchases on top of family visits. Seeing Tripp was fun in its own right, but what was really fun was seeing the chickens. It was kind of fun to make them run around and hear all the noises they made. They were also just kind of freaky. It made me wonder if something like a chicken could exist, what else might be out there? We pulled up to Tripp’s house to find him already on the porch, handling some packaged barbed wire. I raised an eyebrow. “Hey there stranger,” my dad said. Tripp looked up. “Well, howdy. You’re just in time, these are my last packages to take back.” We followed him through his house and to the back where all the coops stood. Well, where almost all of them stood. One of them wasn’t so much standing as it was leaning. When we saw the coop, all demolished, tattered, and torn, we had to run up to see it. “Hey!” my dad shouted as we ran without permission. We froze. But we heard Tripp say, “Nah, let the kids have a look, it’s fine.” DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 117 My dad rolled his eyes and waved us off with his hand, adding: “Be careful.” We scurried off to the coop to see the carnage firsthand. It looked like Tripp cleaned it out. There was no more straw on the floor, nor anything for the chicken’s sake. There were what looked like traces of blood within the remains of the structure—a few spots and speckles on the wood that Tripp had probably missed. I looked around the yard, wondering if I might see the remains of the chickens, though even the thought made my stomach turn just a little bit. If the chickens were anything more than bite-sized chunks at this point, they were nowhere to be seen. I looked back at the structure to see the tin roof peeled back like a can of tuna, and the chain link walls pulled, broken, and snapped, along with the wood posts and wooden floor all bent and splintered. What could’ve done this? A cougar? A bear? I heard my dad and Tripp talking in low tones. “That owl again?” my dad asked. I didn’t hear a response, but I imagined Tripp was nodding. I suddenly had an idea of what the barbed wire was for. “And what are you going to do if it works around the barbed wire? It seems smarter than the average bear.” “Well, I guess I’ll have to take matters into my own hands.” We checked out the broken coop a little longer, then got to play with some of the chickens while Tripp boxed up a bunch of eggs for us in a crate, which dad handled very carefully out to the car. Friday nights could get pretty boring sometimes. We couldn’t stay out too late once fall rolled around and it started to get dark earlier. So, we had to find ways to entertain ourselves around the house. We were playing a board game in the basement when mom came down with a load of laundry. We all peeked our heads above the DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 118 couch’s back to watch her work the washing machine. It was old, and it didn’t work the way it used to. It once had a nob on it, but now the only way to get it to start was by touching one piece of wired metal very particularly to another. We were all fascinated when mom did it because none of us knew how. It seemed simple enough. Just touch the two pieces together. And yet none of us could get it to work when we tried it. Mom had the magic touch. After she set the latest load to cycle, she set the empty basket down so she could transfer the wet clothes outside the next morning, and she went upstairs. There was a brief moment of silence when mom left, interrupted when Vern said, “I can get it this time.” We all walked over to the machine, and we were already scoffing at him, convinced that he most certainly wouldn’t do it. “You must be dumb as dirt,” Billy said, a phrase he picked up from Tripp. Vern rolled his eyes at our youngest brother before carefully placing his fingers on the wires, proudly assuring us that, “Mom won’t even know it was off.” With that, he plucked the wires softly, detaching the metal momentarily. Once we heard the slowing of the cycle, Vern stuck the metal piece back to the other with a triumphant look on his face, but that look of triumph soon turned to panic as he realized the machine was not starting back up again. He tried quickly a couple more times, and we were all containing our laughter so mom wouldn’t hear us. But she almost certainly heard the machine stop, because we could hear her footsteps marching towards the stairs, so we all quickly dashed back to the board game, pretending as if we’d never been near the machine in the first place. When mom reached the bottom of the stairs, our backs were turned to her, but I could feel the weight of her stare on our backs. I held back a shudder, acting all innocent. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 119 I cleared my throat as mom got the machine up and running again. “I don’t want to have to come down here again,” she said as she made her way back up. The board game was far out of our minds at this point, and we began laughing at Vern, who rolled his eyes in annoyance. “Oh yeah, laugh it up, let’s see you all do better.” “You will!” Billy said, jumping up and making his way to the machine. But Shirley grabbed him after just two steps and said, “Woah, didn’t you hear what mom said?” “Don’t worry Shirley,” I said. “She’s not going to have to come back down,” and I walked confidently over to the machine. “You’re out of your mind,” my sister told me. “Yeah,” Vern added. “If I couldn’t get it what chance do you have?” Like fuel to the fire. I walked to the corner of the machine, carefully taking the wires in my hand, memorizing the position of the tiny metal sheets, positive that that was the trick. My siblings walked up to the machines to take audience to my performance. I removed the metal, then waited for the machine to slow, then replaced the metal just as I thought it was. As I should’ve expected, the machine did not restart, and I wasn’t dumb enough to keep trying, so I scurried back to the game, and my siblings scattered after me, not wanting to be the closest to the machine when mom came back down. We could hear her sigh from upstairs. “That’s it,” she said once she reached the basement. After restarting the machine for a second time, she came over to us, pulling each of us onto our feet, having us scared out of our skin as to what she might do to us. She ushered us quickly upstairs and to the DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 120 back porch where grandma was rocking in her chair doing some beading. “Your grandchildren have been messing with the washing machine again,” my mom informed her. Grandma snickered as mom went back inside, leaving us all on the back porch to watch the sunset. We sat in silence for a little while. “So,” my grandma finally said, “you kids have been being pretty ornery?” “Vern started it! Then Dan—” Billy was cut off before he could keep going, or before Vern or I could interject. “Shh!” And with that, we were all hushed. “You kids ever heard of the Great Owl?” I presumed she meant the owl that had been eating Tripp’s chickens, so I nodded, and my siblings nodded along, probably presuming the same. “No you haven’t,” she said before we could keep nodding. “The kids who are the orneriest? We would leave them outside at night when I was a girl.” Okay, she was surely joking. No one would leave a kid outside at night when we all knew that bigfoot was out there. It seemed grandma could sense my disbelief because she looked right at me. “It’s true. The kids would stay on the back porch all night, during the hours when the Great Owl was awake and alert and on the prowl for naughty children. And the naughtiest of kids each night? The Great Owl scoops them up—grabs them by the shoulders—and flies to the deepest, widest, harshest part of the river, and drops the kids there, where they grab onto some hanging branches if they’re lucky. If they’re not lucky? They get carried off to the ocean.” Just a bunch of tall tales… But we didn’t make any fuss the rest of the night. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 121 The next morning, the water greeted my hips again as I reclaimed the basket I’d set on the rock the day before. “Ah Vern, you didn’t tie your basket right! All your acorns floated away,” I called out to him as he was still standing on the bank. “What!” he shouted in shock, running into the water with his shirt still on to find that I was lying. He came up and splashed me while I was untying my basket. “Hey!” dad shouted. “What have I told you guys? Vern, toss your shirt out here,” he demanded, and Vern complied, going to get his basket. My smile soon faded as I thought I heard screams coming from the South. I looked up the river but didn’t see a thing. I looked to my siblings, then my dad, but it looked as though they hadn’t heard a peep. I rationalized that it was my imagination. I didn’t want to admit it, but grandma’s story was weighing on my mind a bit. We were far from the harshest part of the river, so if any kids were drifting down the stream, they were far south from here. I cleared my throat as I carried the basket out of the water, undoing the top to look on the chekcha inside. It looked perfect. While my mom scraped all the chekcha from each of the baskets, containing it and packing it away safely for the coming seasons, dad came in to say, “Tripp caught that owl that was messing with his chickens.” “Really?” I asked with some enthusiasm. Dad was mostly talking to mom, so he was a little surprised when I responded. Nevertheless, he answered me with, “Yup.” “Can we go see?” I asked, and my siblings agreed, all of us looking for something to do this Saturday. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 122 My mom hesitated. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” “Ah, let ‘em go,” my grandma said from the couch. “Before they lose their childhood wonder.” “That’s what I’m afraid of,” my mom mumbled. But my dad shrugged, and soon enough, we were piling into the car. There was a crowd in Tripp’s yard. Apparently, he’d mentioned to a lot of people the fact that he’d caught the owl. We stood by Tripp who was standing at the backdoor. “So, how’d you do it?” dad asked. It was a fair question. We’d been over just the day before, and now the menace was caught. “Well, I got to thinkin’ after you left. I decided to reinforce one of the coops, then I propped the roof open and put some live bait inside. Once it came for the bait, it tripped the trap, and the roof closed itself. So, I found it flying around inside this morning.” “Huh. Not bad.” “Yeah. I just wish I hadn’t spent all that money on barbed wire.” We went over to the crowd that was encircling the owl, trying to get a good look for ourselves, finally coming upon it. It was even bigger than I could’ve imagined. The wings seemed to extend for miles in both directions. It was all spread out for everyone to come and see it. It had two red spots. I didn’t realize it was dead. But I guess that only made sense if it wasn’t in the coop anymore. Tripp shot it twice. I guess once wasn’t enough for a beast like this. Its eyes were still open—a deep yellow. It looked angry as all demons. It looked like a demon unto itself, it had horns and everything. I don’t know if seeing it made me feel better or worse frankly. But I was ready to stick it to grandma. DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 123 “Grandma,” I said once we were all sat on the back porch again. “Hm?” she asked, beading as she usually did at this time of day. “Uncle Tripp caught the great owl,” I said triumphantly. She laughed. Not the response I was expecting. And she laughed for a while too. “You think that tiny thing that Tripp shot a couple times was the Great Owl?” she laughed again. “Oh, no, no, no, not even close. The Great Owl is big.” I thought the owl Tripp got was big… “Its wings stretch past the ends of the forest like the very shadows themselves. The Great Owl has deep red eyes to see all the tiniest details of the night, especially little boys trying to run away. And it definitely can’t be killed. Not by any man, and certainly not by any gun. You think that puny thing was the Great Owl? Dan, you’ve got another thing coming.” She stood out of her chair and went back inside, and throughout that whole motion, she didn’t stop laughing. I failed to see what was so funny. “Hey hun, would you go to the store and grab some more sugar? I think we’ll do pancakes for breakfast,” my mom said Monday morning. We all heard and expressed our cheer. “All right, who’s coming to the store with me?” he asked us. None of us wanted to go, but it wasn’t really a question. I started to wonder if this was just a ploy to get us out of the house for some reason. “I’ll join if you don’t mind,” my grandma said, speaking up and standing up. Then I had an epiphany. If we were going to the store, I could look at the river all the way DESIGN YOUR OWN PROMPT REVISION 124 there, and prove that there were no kids floating in there, and no Great Owl who put them there. “I’ll come too,” I said quickly. “You all will,” my dad agreed. But we were a little extra annoyed since grandma coming meant we all four had to cram into the back. But as we drove along, I diligently paid attention to every inch of the river, watching it all blend together, but on the prowl for any patches that might look like little kids. I made sure to sit on the driver’s side just for this purpose. I watched and watched and watched… and to my great relief, nothing. One we were past the river’s view, I turned toward the front seat and said, “Grandma!” “Hm?” she asked, barely turning her head. “We just drove past the whole river, and there wasn’t a single kid drifting toward the ocean! Not even one holding any hanging branches either. Admit it, there is no Great Owl.” “See those stones peeking up out of the water?” Once again, my grandma had not at all delivered the response I expected from her. But of course, I saw those stones. I knew them well, they were the stones we’d hang our baskets on. “Yeah?” I replied. “Some kids try so hard to swim up the river that they get stuck. They swim for so long that they turn to stone.” All went silent in the car after that. We never messed with the washing machine again. 125 WORKS CITED 5 hours from Denver. (n.d.). Retrieved April 21, 2022, from https://withinhours.com/5-hours-of-denver-co A&E Television Networks. (2009, November 24). John F. 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